Gas blast at JFK campus injures three, shakes neighborhood

Updated on Aug. 27

Officials are blaming a massive explosion at the John F. Kennedy Educational Campus on the night of Aug. 20 on a worker who struck a match in a room full of natural gas.

They said while contractors installed a gas line for a new lab on the sixth floor of the JFK campus’ building, a worker who was unaware the room contained gas light a match.

The resulting explosion, shortly after 8 p.m., damaged at least three of the building’s eight floors and injured three workers.

“What we see here at JFK high is a really shocking scene, the sixth floor having experienced a tremendous explosion,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a press conference on the campus last Thursday.

Firefighters who reached the school at the end of Tibbett Avenue at 8:09 p.m. immediately gave medical treatment to the workers, who had “very serious burns.” Emergency responders then took them to Jacobi Medical Center.

The blast elicited a massive response from the FDNY, NYPD, Office of Emergency Management and other authorities, whose vehicles filled Tibbett Avenue and a stretch of West 230th Street. 

“This building has been seriously damaged, although the structural damage is very limited,” FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro said at last week’s press conference.

An Aug. 21 release from the mayor’s office said the city’s Department of Buildings was working with the School Construction Authority to “assess the stability of the structure and determine a plan for any necessary demolition and remediation.”

The blast means students at some, if not all, of the seven schools housed at the JFK campus will be relocated to other sites for the first day of school, Wednesday, Sept. 9.

“As we get the structural assessment, we’ll be able to let you know in the coming days if part of the building can be open, if all of the building can be open,” Mr. de Blasio said last week.

Residents throughout Marble Hill and parts of Riverdale and Kinsgbridge reported being stunned by the evening explosion.

“I was at my house and everything started shaking, like if there was an earthquake,” said Justin Castro, 16, who lives on West 228th Street. “I was really nervous.”

Justin is a rising junior at the JFK campus’ Bronx School of Law and Finance who came to his school with his mother after observing emergency responders rush to the area.

Asked what it would take for her to feel safe about sending her son to school, the mother, Julissa Perez, said, “That’s what I want to hear. How’s the foundation?”