Chelsea blowout
A spectacular eight-story fireball erupted from an underground Con Ed transformer in Chelsea yesterday, blowing out windows as it scorched a building on Sixth Avenue.
“I could feel the heat on my face from across the street. It was thick, black smoke — it looked like an explosion from the movies,” said Austin Riggs, 27, who snapped this amazing photo of the blast with his cellphone camera.
No one was hurt in the 10:45 a.m. incident at 645 Sixth Ave. at the corner of West 20th Street.
Workers in a ground-floor Radio Shack — who said Con Ed had been working on the transformer on Monday — called 911 when they experienced a building-shaking explosion and then saw smoke coming from a manhole.
The smoke kept up for about 20 minutes before the fire erupted, people in the building said.
“The room filled with smoke. I thought somebody caught something on fire in class,” said Aaron Paternoster, 25, who was practicing welding in an Apex Technical School classroom on one of the building’s upper floors.
The cause of the blast was still undetermined last night.
Additional reporting by Jessica Simeone
