At least 19 people were injured, four of them critically, when an explosion and seven-alarm fire destroyed an apartment building and burned three other structures in New York City’s East Village Thursday.

At an evening news conference, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said a preliminary investigation indicated that a gas explosion caused by plumbing and gas work in the building that collapsed was to blame. The New York Post reported that construction crews accidentally “hit a gas main.”

Craig Ivey, the president of utility company Con Edison said a plumber had been doing work connected to a gas service upgrade, and inspectors had been there to check on a planned meter installation an hour before the fire. But the work failed the inspection, partly because a space for the new meters wasn’t big enough, and the inspectors said gas couldn’t be introduced to that part of the building, Con Ed said.

De Blasio said no one had reported a gas leak before Thursday’s explosion, and Con Edison said it had surveyed the gas mains on the block Wednesday and found no leaks. But bystander Blake Farber, who lives around the corner, told the Associated Press he’d been walking by the building and smelled gas seconds before the big blast.

Smoke from the fire could be seen and smelled across the city in the hours after the explosion, which occurred at around 3:15 p.m. local time. Flames shot out of the top of the five-story building at 2nd Avenue and 7th Street. Items from a ground-floor sushi restaurant were blown into the street, while the force of the explosion blew a cafe door across the avenue. Rubble, glass and debris littered the sidewalks.

The area was evacuated, and the city’s health department advised residents to keep their windows closed because of the smoke. Firefighters continued pouring water on the buildings for hours after the explosion, in an area of old tenement buildings that are home to students and longtime residents near New York University and Washington Square Park. At least one family sought help at an American Red Cross relief center set up at a school.

In addition to the collapsed building, at 121 2nd Avenue, another building next door was “in danger of possible collapse,” according to FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro. Two other nearby buildings were affected by the explosion.

Adil Choudhury, who lives a block away, ran outside when he heard “a huge boom.”

“Already there was smoke everywhere” when he saw the building, he told The Associated Press. “The flames were coming out from the roof. The fire was coming out of every window.”

Area resident Paul Schoengold said he was walking about two blocks away when he heard an “incredibly loud” roar.

“Then the fire started. I could see the flames on the roof, and they kept getting higher,” shooting perhaps 50 feet into the air, he said.

As freelance photographer Michael Seto ran up to the buildings after hearing the explosion in his apartment a block and a half away, flames were spreading and engulfing one building’s first floor.

Meanwhile, a man was climbing up the fire escape, not down, he said.

“People were calling to him that the building’s on fire — he needs to get down,” and he did, Seto said.

Other witnesses described a woman scrambling down her fire escape in the moments after the explosion. She stopped on the second floor, afraid to go further, before passers-by climbed up to help get her down.

In the aftermath, one person was lying on the ground, being attended to by two to three passers-by who were holding his head still, Seto said. A woman was sitting on the curb with blood coming down her face, and another woman walked past him with blood on her face, he said.

The fire happened a little over a year after a gas explosion in a building in East Harlem killed eight people and injured about 50.

FOX NEWS

The New York state Assembly proved that promoting the best interest of women apparently includes pushing late-term abortions.

For years, the state legislature has been embroiled in a battle over a package of bills designed to push the interests of women. The bills have been held up in part because it includes a measure that would promote late-term abortions in the Empire State. Despite strenuous support from pro-abortion Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the legislature has refused to pass the package of bills because of the abortion measure.

The abortion bill would allow an abortion procedure that has abortionists shooting poison through the hearts of unborn children to kill them.

Now, the state Assembly has approved part of the package of bills — specifically the abortion promotion measure Governor Cuomo strenuously supports.

Today in a vote of 94-49 the New York State Assembly approved passage of AB 6221, the extreme stand-alone 10th point from the previously packaged 10-point Women’s Equality Act, which would expand third-trimester abortions and allow non-doctors to perform abortions. Since 2013, abortion advocates have been holding the Women’s Equality Act hostage to this single dangerous bill, refusing to break the 10-point bill up. This session, however, the will of the voters was finally heard, and the stand-alone bills have been considered.

“Expanding cruel and brutal third-trimester abortions has long been a goal of the anti-life lobby who never met an abortion they didn’t like,” said Lori Kehoe, New York State Right to Life executive director. “With no regard for the fully developed unborn baby who is violently dismembered, or otherwise killed, the New York State Assembly once again put the abortion lobby above New York State women and their children.”

AB 6221, sponsored by Assemblywoman Glick, would change existing New York State law, which currently allows for abortion in the third trimester when the mother’s life is in danger, to allow abortion on-demand throughout all nine months. The law would be changed to allow abortion for any reason deemed “relevant to the well-being of the patient” including physical, emotional, psychological, and familial factors, and the mother’s age.

AB 6221 has no interest in the life of the living, developed, unborn human child, stripping away any protections the smallest members of our human family have.

“We now look once again to the Senate to hold the line in defense of the children which happens to also be in accordance with the will of the rest of the people,” added Kehoe. “It is ridiculous that in 2015, with all the technology at our disposal, we are still arguing whether or not an eight month old baby in the womb deserves protection. It is doubtful that our descendants will look kindly upon this period in our history, when we fought for the right to dismember babies weeks, days and even minutes before birth.”

New York State Right to Life will be discussing this and other attacks on members of the human family at their free-to-the-public Lobby for Life Day on April 29 at the Legislative Office Building in Albany.

LIFE NEWS