By KELLY KULTYS

“I was in my room and I heard a crazy loud boom like a bomb going off,” Lee Hayden, FCRH ’15, said. “I turned around just in time to see the sewer caps [about] 10 feet in the air.”

This uncommon sight, an underground explosion forcing the manhole covers straight out of the ground, occurred on Monday Feb. 4 in the late afternoon on Hoffman Street, just a few blocks from campus. Student along the street and in the nearby area rushed out of their residences to survey the scene.

“One of the covers actually landed on my friend’s car and pretty badly damaged the front,” Hayden said. “Also, the whole street reeked like gasoline. I was actually a little concerned for my life at the time.”

Hayden and others had no idea what caused the explosion at the time, but it was later revealed that someone poured gasoline into the sewer, causing the explosion.

According to John Carroll, associate vice president of Security Services, an acquaintance of the landlord of the buildings 2500-2512 on Hoffman, was having issues with his car engine.

The man believed that there was water seeping into his gas tank. He decided to clean out the tank and then poured the gas into the sewer. The mixture of gasoline and sewage caused an explosion, three blocks away, around 187th Street and Hoffman Street. The force of the explosion caused manhole covers to lift off and launch in the air from their usual ground level location.

“The entire neighborhood rushed out onto the street,” Hayden said.

He also said that after some had called 911, people took care to move the manhole covers as well as block off the exposed surface so no one would hit them with their car or truck.

“[It seemed like] FDNY responded immediately, almost within two minutes,” Hayden said.

The FDNY began to flush out the sewers, a process that would take a few hours, by pouring water down the sewers to clean them out.

“My neighbor came out [then] and said that his basement even smelled like gasoline,” Hayden said.

It turned out so did Hayden’s as well as many other basements on the block. FDNY began coming into homes to check on the situations inside.

“We had to cut all our gas lines for the time being,” Hayden said.  “We weren’t asked to evacuate but we had to open all of our doors and windows.”

“I was at work literally all day,” Caroline Barrientos, Hoffman resident, FCRH ’13, said via text. “My roomate called and told me they needed to [get out] so she was letting me know that she grabbed a sweatshirt of mine to put on my dog.”

This was the case for many Fordham students on Hoffman who returned from either their classes or internships to see their street full of fire engines and crowds of people.

Hayden said many neighbors convened outside for a while because the smell of gasoline in their houses was unbearable for a couple of hours.  FDNY remained during this time to completely filter the sewers. Students such as Hayden were very glad the FDNY  responded so quickly and completed their jobs thoroughly.

After investigation, according to Carroll, security officials met with the landlord and asked him not to allow people to park their cars behind the buildings where students live.

Hoffman St. is a very popular off-campus residential street for Fordham students as it is located only a short walk from campus and is near many popular attractions, such as Arthur Ave.

The landlord and the owner of the car received summonses from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

According to envirolaw.com, pouring gasoline into the sewers is considered a “discharge into the natural environment.” This is a violation of Section 2 of the EPA.

Also, earlier this year in July, according to an article on NJ.com, a man poured gasoline into the sewers in Northeast Philadelphia, which also caused them to catch fire.

Around 8:30 p.m., The Fordham Ram investigated the area as well and saw that the street had been reopened and cleaned. The covers were also already back in place.

Hayden said that the street itself was fixed, but there were some other damages; luckily none  were to any residents or passersby.

“The street is fine now but some of our water pipes [in our basement] got knocked down from the impact,” Hayden said.

According to Carroll, the landlord was very cooperative, and he had not known what the car owner was doing at the time.