A line of parked vehicles ignited one by one Friday in Midtown East.
According to CBS2 report, mobile phone video revealed the block-long inferno. Flames extended down the north side of 58th Street close to Second Avenue, consuming car and then other car.
7 automobiles were reduced to toasted shells of exactly what they once had been. One of the automobile that was damaged was George Attard’s brand new minivan.
“I received a call from my doorman who said, ‘Your car is on fire,'” Attard stated. “Everything started from the van– from the plumbing van.”
The work van where the fire started comes from Gold’s Plumbing. Its driver informed investigators he had just pulled over on 58th Street in between First and Second avenues at 9 a.m.
A smoky, mechanical issue forced him out of the van. And then came a boom, and the fire snaked along a trail of leaking fuel downhill.
“The gasoline ran under the cars and I guess cars went on fire,” Attard stated.
Locals of the apartment building closest to the burned out cars were inside. They heard the sounds of explosion and went to the windows, and took video with cellular phone.
“They needed to break windows to put the fire out,” informed Mike McNenny.
McNenny recorded video from his seventh-floor house window.
“I was sort of like a little bit afraid, like, well I question if the building’s, going to, you know, like, go on fire,” he stated. “But like I stated, the Fire Department did a good job.”
“I kept an eye out the window, saw cars on fire, and I came downstairs,” said Julie Leventhal. “Thankfully. everybody was OK.”
Leventhal informed the shock only briefly rocked neighbors. Nobody was injured, and the block quickly reopened to traffic.
