The Worse Explosion

“People in that area should act as if there is asbestos … as a precaution,” the chairman and chief executive officer of Con Edison, Kevin Burke, said, following last Wednesday’s steam pipe explosion in Midtown.Quite a different message was sent back in the summer of 1989, when an even larger explosion rocked my building in Gramercy Park. That year’s geyser of superheated steam, rubble, and scalding mud erupted on the corner of 20th Street and Third Avenue and raged for four hours. Windows imploded. Trees bent. Manholes bounced. Bricks and chunks of street sent cars spinning. Three people died: a 28-year-old new mother napping in her third floor apartment and two utility workers, one of whom was literally steamed to death after seeking refuge in our lobby’s mailroom. You could see where he tried to kick through the sheetrock only to find brick.Twenty-four were injured, many from jumping out windows. Those evacuated by the firefighter’s cherry pickers included a pregnant woman four days overdue who later gave birth to what headlines called “the Asbestos Baby.” But asbestos was a word only used later. When the roaring stopped, the Con Edison workers, police officers, and various hard-hat city agency officials stood around the lip of the 20 foot crater left by the blast and determined it was safe for us to go home.No one from Channels 2,4,5,6, 9, 11, or CNN thought to question that assessment. Though it was nice to see our Mayor Koch jump aboard a departing ambulance, he did not, as Michael Bloomberg did last week, stress his worries about “lingering health concerns.” So we went back to clean up our building — an ordinary redbrick co-op now encrusted in mud. Even the trees on the terraces 18 stories up looked like they were made of adobe. And since all the windows in the lower-level apartments facing 20th Street, and many in the upper ones were shattered, the inside of the building was almost as dirty.Four days later, two independent testers hired by our tenant board found more than 200 pounds of ammonite — asbestos at its most perilous — in that mud we were sweeping up and vacuuming away.Arriving home that night, we were met at the door by a police officer who gave me five minutes to grab a few belongings and evacuate. Don’t take clothes, they told us, they may be contaminated. Nonetheless local dry cleaners quickly jumped to cash in, offering discounts on “asbestos cleaning.”Don’t take paper was the more frightening warning. All paper would likely be buried in a toxic waste dump on Staten Island. For a writer who worked at home this was almost as disconcerting as the encouragements to get base line chest X-rays. There were no further explanations.Asbestos is a paradox of nature, a fluffy rock. It’s a fibrous material that is light, downy, and fireproof, and therefore almost miraculously useful. In cities, it was once ubiquitous, found in, among other things, concrete, ceiling panels, theater drapes, brake linings, chemical filters, and electrical and steam-pipe insulation.Harmless when doing its job, asbestos becomes extremely hazardous when airborne. You can’t see the floating fibers, but under a microscope they look like needles. You can’t smell them, nor are they painful to breathe in. Yet, if you inhale enough, chances are you’ll find out a decade or two down the line that you have lung cancer. Or asbestosis, scarring of the lung. Or malignant mesothelioma, tumors in the chest lining. All of these diseases are almost always fatal.Con Ed wrapped the building in plastic like a sinister Christo and hired abatement workers who ransacked our apartments as they cleaned them. Some were caught smuggling jewelry out of the building in their negative fit respirator masks and soda bottles. Others were seen dancing on the scaffolding or found to be illegal aliens.When we were finally allowed back in five months later, it was clear that the entire building had been the scene of a giant crime spree and party. The workers had gone through all our liquor and food and had broken whatever they couldn’t steal. Much of the damage was truly inexplicable. Photographs — not mine — were strewn across my bed. A floor lamp — not mine — was glued to my floor. A gay pornography video — not mine — was inside my smashed up VCR.A settlement somewhat compensated us for our belongings. Mayor Koch finally called for an investigation into whether Con Ed had engaged in a cover up.But it was only after five years of denials that, in 1994, the company finally pleaded guilty to conspiracy and environmental law violations. The sentence: $2 million in fines and two years of monitoring by a lawyer from the Natural Resources Defense Council.Experts say that short-term asbestos exposure, even if intense, is probably not harmful, but those of us who lived in Gramercy Park during that explosion will find out soon enough for ourselves. In the meantime, we were heartened to see utility workers search through the debris of this most recent explosion for the cancer-causing toxin — even if it simply was to avoid a lawsuit.Ms. Eisenstadt is a writer who now lives in Brooklyn.

The Worse Explosion

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