The explosion turned a normal Wednesday morning in East Harlem into hell.
Pedestrians were battered about, windows shattered, debris flew - and that was just across the street from where a massive blast felled two apartment buildings at 1644 and 1646 Park Ave.
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New video, obtained by WCBS-TV, taken from across Park Ave. at 116th St. shows the moment the blast waves hit the street and noxious black smoke enters the screen as the buildings go down in a heap.
“I thought it was an earthquake,” Ibrahim Occasion, a victim displaced by the explosion staying at the Red Cross shelter, told the New York’s CBS affiliate. “It was an explosion, like, connected to your building, so it’s insane stuff.”
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The deadly explosion, sparked following a suspected gas leak, killed eight people in the two buildings, injured dozens and led to the evacuations of 91 nearby apartments.
The video shows the morning’s calm suddenly shattered - windows violently blow out, dropping debris on parked cars.
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The clip was taken from across the street, which is bisected by an elevated Metro North train track that runs between the north and southbound lanes of Park Ave.
A pedestrian walking away from the blast is stunned, covering his head in disbelief as the shock waves disorient and nearly knock down the traveler.
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Curtains and what appears to be clothes flutter down from the damaged apartments as the dark smoke creeps into the frame as the buildings across the street, not seen in the picture, begin to crumble and go up in flames.
A tree and street sign waver in the shock waves given off by the explosion, which caused seismic activity detected by earthquake monitors run by Columbia University and leveled the two five-story buildings in the immediate vicinity.
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There’s no audio on the surveillance videos, which point both north and south, but for military veteran Anthony Betterflicks, “I just felt like I was on the battlefield,” the witness told WCBS.
Investigators are still combing through the wreckage days after the blast.
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