Photograph of the red tow truck by sidewalk_story on Flickr A year ago today, a 24" steam pipe installed in 1924 broke and caused a massive explosion on Lexington Avenue and East 41st Street. Right after the blast, the Mayor called it a "failure of infrastructure." A woman died from a heart attack, while two people sitting in a truck right on top of the explosion were seriously burned: Passenger Judith Bailey suffered third-degree......

Photo courtesy Occipital Lobe. Those high natural gas and oil prices have raised the prices for wholesale electricity that Con Ed buys from power-generating companies, and naturally the company is passing those expenses along to us. The company says that residential customers will pay 22% more for electricity this year than they did last summer – almost a quarter of that spike is due to a Bloomberg-approved rate hike. Harlem flea market vendor Cruz Reyes,......

Yesterday, a water main broke on West 57th Street, between 5th and 6th Avenues, causing evacuations and a messy street. A witness described what it looked like to NY1, "I'm walking down the street and all of the sudden I see a little peak in the road, almost like the earth's crust lifted up. Then dirty water kept on spewing up and slowly filled the street." An 85-year-old pipe burst, and a steam pipe......

Earlier there was news of a luxury condo leveling a church and digging up graves, now word is in that the South Williamsburg power plant on Kent Avenue will meet the same fate. The Brooklyn Paper reports that Con Edison has finally admitted its plan to demolish the defunct power plant and neighborhood landmark.Neighbors of the abandoned Kent Avenue power plant knew something was up back in March, when workers started tearing holes into the......

Above, rendering of the proposed park; below, photograph of the site in its current state A $114 million plan to put a waterfront park on the East River, just south of the United Nations, came into focus yesterday; the four-acre site is where a parking lot for a Con Edison power plant used to reside. City Councilman Daniel Gardonick said, "The opportunity to create this riverfront park is an opportunity we cannot afford to......

Charles F. Luce, who was Con Ed's chairman and chief executive between 1967 and 1982, died last week at the age of 90 in California. The Bronxville, NY resident died of prostate cancer. The NY Times notes that unlike most "big business executives," Luce was a liberal Democrat and environmentalist. He took a considerable amount of heat for a NYC blackout during the summer of 1977 and faced angry shareholders who didn't appreciate their dividends......

A new report from Con Ed reveals that "a tiny clump of leak-sealing epoxy" caused the blast in a Midtown steam pipe earlier this year. The pipe, at Lexington and 41st Street, ruptured on July 18, causing millions in damage; one person died of a heart attack while two people in a tow truck above the pipe and subjected to 400-degree steam were critically burned. Con Ed, as well as the city, is facing......

The gas main explosion that rocked a home on 48th Ave. and 41st. St. Wedneday––killing one woman and injuring six others––occurred despite what ConEd and FDNY say was them following proper procedures preceding the incident. Kunta Oza, who died at the age of 69, was burned over 90% of her body. In addition to the six others injured in the explosion, 200 people were evacuated from the block until it was deemed safe to return.......

The 69-year-old woman who was burned over 90% of her body in a gas explosion in her Sunnyside home died yesterday. City Councilman Eric Gioia said, "It is with great regret and sadness that I announce the passing of Kunta Oza. My deepest condolences go out to her entire family, and I ask that all New Yorkers keep them in their Thanksgiving prayers." On Wednesday afternoon, calls were made to 911 about a gas smell......

Could this be an instance where Con Ed isn't to blame? The utility says that a garbage truck may have compromised the sidewalk grate a young woman fell through earlier this year! In May, a woman fell 10-12 feet through sidewalk grating outside 150 West 51st street. Luckily, Jessica Hinksmon only suffered minor injuries, narrowly avoiding being electrocuted by an electrical transformer. Con Ed says that a video shows a private sanitation truck driving......

The State Public Service Commission is fining Con Ed $18 million for failing to meet reliability standards during the nine-day Queens blackout last year. PSC Chairwoman Patricia Acampora said, "Hopefully, this order today will send a message to Con Ed that they must be diligent in their efforts to maintain a reliable network, or they will face financial consequences." As far as we're concerned, it seems like Con Ed got off easy. Especially when they......

It was only half of what Con Ed was asking for, but employees of the State Public Service Commission (PSC) recommended that the utility be allowed to raise rates by the highest amount in the company's history. ConEd wanted to raise rates by $1.2 billion and the PSC officials said that it recommended a hike of $618 million. The New York Times reports that the recommendation was made by members of the PSC's professional staff,......

TIP: According to Paper's Mr. Mickey, Chloë Sevigny is having a tag sale on her block this Saturday. We're guessing there will be lots of vintage Balenciaga. Check out her apartment in House & Garden...pretty nice! EVENT: The Howl Festival (which took last year off) continues on throughout the weekend. Tomorrow around 2pm you can catch Moby with his band The Little Death in Tompkins Square Park. Check out the full schedule here. All Weekend......

Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg announced a project to commemorate abolitionist activity that occurred in Brooklyn in the 1800s. He named a panel made up of community leaders, academics, and historians to aid the city and Downtown Brooklyn Partnership in asking for and reviewing commemoration proposals. The panels of the Commemoration Panel are: the Reverend Lawrence Aker, Senior Pastor, Cornerstone Baptist Church; Richard Greene, Executive Director, Crown Heights Youth Collective; Colvin L. Grannum, President, Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration......

Yesterday, Con Edison removed the tow truck sitting in the crater where a steam pipe explosion ripped a 15' by 25' hole in 41st Street and Lexington Avenue. The utility will investigate the damage in hopes of getting a better idea of what caused the Wednesday night explosion. Other clean up crews were working on other parts of the damaged area. One contractor who will be washing the facade of a building told WNBC,......

The city continued clean-up at the site of Wednesday's Midtown steam pipe explosion at East 41st and Lexington Avenue. Vanderbilt Avenue has been reopened, and Third Avenue was scheduled to be reopened today. Clean up of 42nd Street between Third and Park should be done by Monday, while clean up of Lexington between 42nd and 43rd should be done by the end of the weekend. Here's what the city said about the asbestos samples:The......

As we know, Con Edison and the New York City Department of Environmental Protection have confirmed that asbestos was found in debris after the steam pipe explosion at 41st Street and Lexington, but that there is no airborne asbestos. If you were in the area of the explosion and have contaminated clothing, Con Ed is actually accepting clothes and will dispose of them:Anyone who was in that area around 6 p.m. who has dust or......

Thirty years ago tonight, New York City lost electricity when a Con Ed substation was hit by lightning strikes and a "cascading effect" caused the system to shut down around 9PM. And NYC, as well as parts of Westchester County, were powerless for over a day in the sweltering heart of the summer. Subways were stuck, mobs set fires and stores were looted. It was also the summer that other dramas gripped the city......

Well, there's nothing like having a barely-one-hour blackout on a sultry weekday to make you consider stocking up on flashlights, batteries, water, and maybe a Go Bag. Con Ed is still investigating the cause of yesterday's brief power failure to parts of the Bronx and Manhattan; Newsday reported "the blackout was caused when breakers opened at an Astoria substation and cut off power to stations servicing Yorkville and parts of the Bronx." It's unclear......

We doubt they'll be paying livery cab drivers to park over dangerous-looking grates until they can be checked, but Con Edison is promising to check all 18,000 of its sidewalk grates after a woman plunged through one Thursday morning, landing close to a potentially lethal source of electricity. She was eventually rescued by two firefighters. The regional electric utility is still in the process of identifying electrical "hot spots" that have killed at least one......

Yesterday's storm brought flooding, closed roadways, delayed mass transit, difficult drives, soaked clothing, upended umbrellas and 7.46 inches of rain to Central Park. There were winds of 48 MPH at Kennedy Airport, as hundreds of flights in the area airports were canceled. And some environmentalists noted the irony of Saturday's Sea of People demonstration while the mayor was issuing emergency flood warnings for downtown Manhattan. Con Edison reported about city 1,700 households were without......

Last week, the city released 247-page report that offered a "mild rebuke" to Con Ed over last summer's blackout. Two outside lawyers from Couch and White wrote the report that finds Con Ed did some things wrong, but felt criticism over not shutting down the LIC Network (which many critics think would have shortened the blackout) was unjustified, because no one knows if that would have helped things. The NY Times summarized the key......

On my ConEd bill there is always a line at the bottom that reads "Go to a new supplier to reduce charges…" I looked into this and apparently in NYC we are able to purchase our energy through parties other than ConEd—some of them I assume offer energy from renewable sources. ConEd still charges a delivery fee, so you get two bills—one from ConEd and one from the energy supplier. I did a little research,......

THEATER: There’s a growing cultural phenomenon in Japan called hikikomori, in which young people (as many as 1 million) withdraw into their rooms and refuse any contact with the outside world, sometimes for years. (In America, it’s called adolescence.) The Attic, by acclaimed Japanese playwright Yoji Sakate, is about “a mysterious company that sells tiny ‘attics’ over the internet to people who want to withdraw from society. One man embarks on a quest to find......

A Boston terrier died yesterday while walking on Rector Street, seemingly from an electrical shock. The dog, named Boston Bob, was being walked by his dog-walker when he stepped on a sidewalk near a manhole. The NY Times reports the 16 pound dog "suddenly lifted his paws, yelped in pain and went limp in the dog walker’s arms." And the dog walker told a witness that Bob was bleeding after the shock. Pet store owner......

If you want to read an incredibly damning indictment of Con Edison ever put to 185-page PDF, we highly recommend reading the Public Service Commission study (here's the PDF) of what happened during last summer's Queens blackout. Our favorite summary of the major screw up that was Con Ed's response is Con Edison’s performance in preparing for, and responding to, the outage event was deficient, a gross disservice to its customers. Or is it......

You may remember Christopher X. Brodeur from his unexpectedly successful run for mayor, or from his spectacularly unsuccessful fight against aggravated harassment charges that landed him in the clink for six months last year. Well, he's back, and he's taking the fight to a new enemy: the Con Edison bill printing department! From an email he sent us this morning: Have you seen the new, larger Con Ed bills, which of course waste more......

After over 200 hundred bone fragments have been found in recent searches for remains at the World Trade Center site, Mayor Bloomberg is expanding the search considerably. Here's the Mayor's press release about a report from the Despartment of Design and Construction:Although the report finds that the vast majority of the site had been thoroughly searched and is free of human remains, it recommends the continued excavations on the haul road where remains have been......

With the weather turning quite brisk today, it's almost hard to remember that back in stifling July heat, many neighborhoods were without power for days and days. Almost. Yesterday, Con Ed released a 600 page report detailing what happened, why they decided not to shut down the network, and why trying to fix the problem caused delays. All in all, Con Ed is saying it wasn't really their fault - it was the equipment!......

Yesterday, the Fire Department released 1,613 phone calls made to fire and EMS dispatchers, and the calls are just heartbreaking. The Mayor explained why the calls had been withheld by the city - they were only released upon a lawsuit - saying, "The real issue here is to protect the families...[was it] really is worth putting the families through reliving the grief that I think none of the rest of us would possibly imagine."......