By Stephen Stirling
A year after an explosion killed a Sunnyside woman the day before Thanksgiving, City Councilman Eric Gioia (D−Sunnyside) said Con Edison is not doing enough to fix the cause of the blast: thousands of miles of cast iron piping that lies beneath city streets.
Last week, Gioia held a news conference outside of Con Ed headquarters in Manhattan to call on the utility to replace what he said is more than 2,500 miles of cast iron pipes in the city. Con Edison recently settled a lawsuit with the family of Kunta Oza, who died from her injuries last year after a cast iron pipe cracked and leaked gas into her apartment before erupting in a violent explosion.
“While Con Ed recently came to a $3.7 million settlement with the Oza family, they have yet to address the underlying causes that led to this tragedy,” Gioia said. “At a time when most utilities are done replacing their cast iron pipes, there are enough cast iron pipes underneath the city to get from New York to Phoenix. They need to speed up their removal before another tragedy occurs.”
Oza, 69, died on Thanksgiving after sustaining serious burns over most of her body in the blast, which caused damage to four homes. The explosion occurred in the basement of Oza’s home, located near the corner of 41st Street near 48th Avenue in Sunnyside, after a cast iron gas main ruptured and leaked gas into the room.
Con Ed workers had been called to the area to investigate reports of a gas−like odor, but did not find the cause of the leak before the explosion occurred, triggering a two−alarm fire and that killed Oza.
Gioia said Con Ed is currently replacing cast iron piping at the rate of 40 miles per year, meaning all of the piping would not be replaced until about 2070. Gioia said it was unacceptable for the utility to ignore a problem that has led to the death of one of its customers.
“We cannot wait for another tragedy to occur to do what’s right,” he said.
An investigation into the Sunnyside explosion showed that the significant wear and tear and rust had caused the pipe to crack. In 1990, the National Transportation Safety Board urged the nation’s cities to replace their cast iron piping after determining that the infrastructure systems break down over time and crack.
Reach reporter Stephen Stirling by e−mail at sstirling@timesledger.com or by phone at 718−229−0300, Ext. 138.
