City Still Searching for Explosion Survivors

As of Thursday afternoon, the cleanup of the East Harlem explosion and building collapse was still a search operation, and New York City Fire Commissioner Sal Cassano said that he had not given up hope of finding more survivors.

“There’s a chance because if there’s a void where somebody’s at that’s protected—and that’s why we do it very gingerly,” he said on The Ride Home with Pat Kiernan radio show. “We try to take the debris off, we don’t just scoop it off, and then we can see a void and if we can take a look in, we will.”

He added, “We’ll search like it’s a rescue effort until there isn’t a possibility that somebody is alive.”