Firefighters battle a large fire that broke out on Thursday afternoon in New York City’s East Village neighborhood. Ashley Day, USA TODAY
A building burns after an explosion on 2nd Avenue on March 26, 2015 in New York City. (Photo: Andrew Burton, Getty Images)
NEW YORK -- A five-story apartment building collapsed Thursday after an explosion touched off a raging seven-alarm fire in Manhattan's East Village.
Fire officials said four people were hospitalized in critical condition and 12 people were treated at the scene.
More than 255 firefighters and emergency service workers rushed to the blaze at Second Avenue at East 7th Street, pouring water onto a raging fire that sent flames high into the sky.
"I heard a big boom, and everybody went to see what had happened," said Kate Walter, who had been eating in Veselka, a Ukrainian restaurant two blocks north of the scene.
Matty Disilvestro, a 51-year-old construction worker, told the New York Post that he felt "the pressure of the blast" from a block away.
"I heard a loud explosion, just a very loud vibrating boom ... People who were on the sidewalks and even people on the opposite side of the street were hit with debris," he told the newspaper.
Three workers from the Pommes Frites restaurant located in a building that abuts the disaster site stood in apparent shock as firefighters, police and rescue crews rushed in.
The men, their faces flecked with soot and dust, said they'd been inside when the disaster occurred, and did not know whether everyone in the restaurant had managed to get out.
Another man said he heard the explosion while standing in a nearby barbecue restaurant. "It was like an earthquake kinda sound," Miles Barber tells WNYC. "But then nothing after that, so we're like uh oh. What's going on? So everyone runs out of the restaurant and you can just see the building like, the windows, everything just falling over like almost going into the street."
The fire apparently broke out in a sushi restaurant on the lower level of the building and began spreading through the roof to a neighboring structure, WABC-TV reports.
At one point, firefighters -- using aerial ladders to stream the water -- were forced to pull back because of the intensity of the flames, WABC reports. The front of the building collapsed shortly afterward and raised fears that a second building could also fall.
Scott Westerfield posted footage on YouTube of flames shooting into the sky from the roof of the structure. The video was also posted by WNYC.
The NYFD, in a tweet, described the incident as a seven-alarm fire and a "mixed occupancy major building collapse."
The office of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said he was heading to the scene.
There was no immediate report on the cause of the explosion, although fire department dispatchers said no gas leak was detected at the scene.
Contributing: Doug Stanglin in McLean, Va.
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