Residents React To Power Outage, Gas Main Break

Jennifer Chaitin was one of dozens of onlookers at the scene of the on North Broadway in Nyack Thursday.

The blaze was started during O&R's  in downtown Nyack, which has been taking place for several months. Read more about the explosion in this . 

"It's not causing me any delays. I don’t live there, I just own the building," she said pointing to 66 North Broadway. "An explosion like this is never pretty. I’m just worried if there’s any damage and if everybody’s ok. I checked everything out and as far as I know, everybody’s ok. One tenant called me. He wasn’t home yet and he’s concerned about his house."

She added that although her building seems to not have any damage, the larger building and condos next door do not look as fortunate. 

"The flames are getting smaller. They haven’t gotten them to stop yet, but they were licking the tops of the poles and lit a few of the wires on fire but the firefighters put those out," said Tim Stone of 30 Second Avenue. 

He and his wife Clarissa Stone were both checking out the fire as well. 

"We just got back home. Power went out and we checked to see if we tripped any of the circuits," said Clarissa Stone. "We came running out and it turned into a melee."

Volunteer firefighters were moving quickly to control the fire. While firefighter Andrew Popov was dealing with the flames, his family looked on from his house at 89 First Avenue. 

Lydia Harran, Popov's sister, said that as they were coming back to the house, there was "quite a bit of commotion. The flames must have reached 20 feet. I called my brother, this is his house and he’s a volunteer fireman so he’s down there somewhere."

"There’s no power and the air conditioning is down and everything," said Taisija Popov, 92, Popov's mother. 

"How did it happen, why weren’t precautions taken. We’ve never seen anything like this. (Taisija) She's lived here for 60 years," said Harran, who accompanied her to the doctor earlier. "We went to her doctor and we were coming back. I couldn’t get the car any closer (to the house), so we parked down there a bit and she had to use her walker to get up here."

Large parts of the roadway were sectioned off and traffic was directed around the scene of the fire.

Over at 81 First Avenue, Kat has also been struggling without power.

"The power went out so I looked outside and saw the (fire)trucks. I thought this building was on fire so we came outside," she said. "That’s when (a firefighter) he told us that the gas line burst. They were doing construction up there, since yesterday. I guess they hit the gas line and it just blew. We have no power. No AC or TV."

As of 6:38 p.m, the residual gas was burning off, officials said and 415 customers of the 2,500 who lost power when the explosion occurred remained without power.