A year on, we remember the victims of the East Harlem Gas Explosion which shattered a still late winter morning and for a moment put the fear of another terrorist attack in NYC. For a time I was the go to person for the media around the world! If only they knew ;). Here’s what happened for me on that day.
When you work from home, you tend to be a bit slobbish, well we do. I’m certainly productive but who says you can’t be productive in pj’s? Not me!
Wednesday started like any other morning, hoisting the tween and teen out of bed almost too late because I couldn’t get my own carcass moving. Then the endless bickering and all the crap that goes with mornings. You all know the drill so there’s no need to explain.
They finally left and I sat down to get totally absorbed in facebook and twitter and waste hours of time write. I’ve been doing a piece on the healthcare deadline. We’ve finally succumbed, realising the fine will be quite substantial for us, so if we must pay money, we might as well get some coverage! We’re geniuses like that…
In my 8th floor living room, on the couch in my pj’s, third coffee going down, I heard a huge BOOM! In all honesty it sounded like the banging of metal, like a dropped dump truck tray or a skip bin crashing off the pulley or something of that nature right under my window! I felt the building shake at the same time.
We live in the ‘hood, there’s LOTS of construction, there’s always something going on, some sort of weird loud noise happening. So I wasn’t terribly concerned. But then my social media started…
“My building just shook, is this an earthquake?”
“Did you guys hear that noise?”
“Wow that was loud..”.
Words to those effects started flooding my iphone screen and so I did what I do best to find out what the fuck happened! I did a discover hashtag on twitter. #explosioninharlem and a picture came up of smoke with someone saying that the 116 subway blew up! Well fuck, I live on 115 right near the subway, so I flew upstairs, outside onto the terrace (glad for the mild weather) and sure enough I saw this!
Now I have to say, I was mildly relieved to see it all the way over on the East side, not our 116 station. As you can see it was just beginning, so I posted this picture on twitter and then someone asked to use that picture, to which I responded sure please credit amotherlife.com cos I’m an unabashed media whore… and THEN shit got real. Remember I’m in my pj’s!
Next NBC contacted to use the picture, then someone else and then a picture came out credited to me and it wasn’t mine, then CBS tweeted for me to call them and then another, who I tried but couldn’t get through so in a split second decision I tweeted my number to him!
Well that was the move! Next thing I know I’m being inundated with tweets and calls and emails and then I’m on hold waiting to go on with Chris Wragge and Sarah Siciliano on CBS morning. I was outside explaining what I was seeing, explaining how it started ALL ON NATIONAL TV!
Total craziness! The media had no idea what was happening and here they were connected to an Aussie girl in her pj’s on a terrace, 5 avenue blocks west! It was pretty surreal. They didn’t stop! Brazil called. Danish tv tweeted, Irish news tweeted, Huff Post UK….WTF?! I did another live to air interview on Brazil TV and then CNN reached out. ‘Are you the Molley Mills we’ve seen all over this morning?’ UM yeah! ‘Great what happened? Can we interview you?’ OMG people, it was a spectacular fuck up!
But then their people on the ground started to get better info and the frenzy died down, at least for me, but seriously for 3 hours Wednesday morning, while dozens of people were injured and at least 7 lay buried under the rubble, I was the point person to the explosion in Harlem!
As details filtered through, they told us it was a gas explosion, there was no terror threat, 2 people were found quickly, critical and later died.
It became pretty apparent that this was a terrible tragedy as more and more people were unaccounted for. The stations ran it all day, twitter retweeted my original pic 100’s of times and the one that wasn’t even mine!
First responders worked into the night, trying to extinguish the fire and continue to search for the missing, hoping beyond reason they’d find someone alive.
Thursday morning brought worse news, the death toll had climbed to 7 and a total of 70 people reported to area hospitals with injuries.
At the writing of this article there are still two people unaccounted for. Hundreds of people will be spending their second night in temporary accommodations and those who’ve lost love ones will begin the grieving process.
Live every day to the fullest peeps because honestly, you just never know.
Comments 2
I remember you tweeting that initial picture, but I had no idea that it go retweeted so much and you became the go-to person. How wild, and how awful for the people killed and injured. Hard to believe it has been a year.
As someone else who works in my pj’s all day I feel your pain. What an exciting day though!