NEW YORK (AP) — A massive, fiery explosion at a house in Queens sent several New York City police officers flying through the air early Thursday morning as they were responding to a call of a man inside armed with a knife and the smell of gas.
Eight officers were treated for minor injuries — including burns and at least one head laceration — after the blast, and all of the people who were inside the building have been accounted for, though several were taken to a hospital, police said.
Police body camera video of the explosion shows officers about to enter a small home in Queens before 3 a.m., and just as one starts to open the door, a huge blast erupts, blowing out windows and knocking officers back across a yard and into a gate. The officers can then been seen scrambling to recover through debris as smoke billows out of the house, checking on each other to see if anyone had been hurt.
“You guys good?” one of the officers can be heard saying.
The video then cuts to about a minute later and shows an officer helping two young children out of the home as a handful of other people come staggering out of the house.
“I want to be clear: We got very lucky today, alright,” Assistant Chief Christopher McIntosh of the New York Police Department said at a news briefing hours later. “This could have turned out really differently.”
“Thankfully, today, luck was on their side,” he said of the officers.
McIntosh said the man who prompted the initial call arrived at the home intoxicated and carrying a knife and two garbage bags filled with canisters containing an “unknown substance.” He pushed in an air conditioning unit to get into a basement apartment where his wife, daughter and two grandchildren live.
They were eventually able to flee from the building and officers arrived shortly after that. The man is unaccounted for, McIntosh said.
The home collapsed after the explosion, authorities said. Neighboring homes were also damaged.