Posted on 02/21/2003 11:22:28 AM PST by dead
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Two people were missing after a barge carrying gasoline exploded off New York's Staten Island on Friday, sending flames and huge clouds of black smoke high into the air, but officials in a city already jittery about security said it was an accident.
The blast occurred at 10:10 a.m. EST at an oil terminal 16 miles southwest of Manhattan, where residents have been on edge and police on the highest security alert possible since the Sept. 11 hijacked plane attacks destroyed the World Trade Center.
Two workers were unaccounted for and one worker was admitted to hospital with serious burns, officials said.
"There is absolutely no evidence and no reason to think that this is anything other than a very tragic industrial accident," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a news conference near the scene.
"Two people are missing and we fear the worst for them," Bloomberg said.
Initial reports from the New York fire department and shipping sources said the barge was carrying propane or heating oil at the Port Mobil terminal owned by Exxon Mobil Corp., but the company later said it contained unleaded gasoline.
"Shortly after the explosion we saw a huge plume of smoke rising up from the area," said Yehuda Farkas of the New York State emergency medical services on Staten Island, one of the city's five boroughs.
The terminal is in an industrial area but people on Staten Island and nearby New Jersey towns felt a blast and could smell the fumes. The New York mayor said a few people who live near the fire were briefly evacuated.
DAMAGE CONFINED
"All of the damage was confined to the barge and the very immediate vicinity, within yards," Bloomberg said.
Waterways leading into New York Harbor were open, except for the Arthur Kill between Staten Island and New Jersey.
A federal law enforcement official said FBI (news - web sites) agents will be sent to the scene, but it likely was an industrial accident.
"As far as terrorism or whether it was criminal in nature, there are no indications, but it is too early to make any assessment," the official said.
ExxonMobil, the world's largest oil company, said in a statement that a barge containing 100,000 barrels of unleaded gasoline was being unloaded when an explosion occurred.
"Our focus now is on putting the fire out and ensuring the safety of the public and our employees," the company said.
The barge no. 125 is owned by Bouchard Transportation Company Inc. of Hicksville, New York, and built in 1975. It was 340 feet long 74 feet wide and 30 feet deep and could carry 118,000 barrels of light oil products such as gasoline and heating oil.
Shipping sources also said a second barge full of gasoline was loading when the barge in front of it exploded. The second barge has been removed, officials said.
The explosion and fire rattled investor nerves already skittish over a possible U.S.-led war against Iraq, sending the Dow Jones industrial average down almost 0.8 percent to 7,854.38. The Dow later recouped its losses as fears the explosion was set off deliberately subsided.
Keith Keenan, vice president of institutional trading at brokerage Wall Street Access, said the fire "had a lot of people on edge" in the market.
U.S. crude oil futures rose more than $1 a barrel after the fire. April crude traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange jumped to $35.95 a barrel, surging $1.21.
(Additional reporting by Rene Pastor, Bernard Woodall, Manuela Badawy, Denise Duclaux and Adam Pasick)
Hey dead, I used to live in Hicksville when I was a young child. Now I live in Hog Wallow.
It's a dangerous business. I remember one explosion there about 20 years ago that I felt in my home thirty miles away. That explosion only killed one truck driver, but it broke windows five miles away. It was around midnight, so the area was luckily pretty deserted.
A number of my friends from college were fishing that night on the beach at Sandy Hook. They saw the explosion happen. They said it looked like an A-bomb went off. They were guessing the number killed would be in the hundreds. But there was just one poor unlucky truckdriver on the scene.
We could see the flames for hours.......
Most amazing was that only one person died in that explosion, and he died of a heart attack.
The fire ball shot so high in the air, that everybody in the apartments had time to run away before it descended and burned everything down. I worked in Piscataway at the time, and remember driving by the next day. It was eerie. The apartments were just gone, and there was dozens of shells of cars still smoldering.
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