A potent, noxious gas odor – first noticed in the waters off Bayonne, N.J. – wafted to the shores of Staten Island and Queens yesterday, sickening at least 21 people and prompting hundreds more to frantically call 911.
“I started to see people go down like flies,” said one shaken witness who had been standing outside the evacuated HIP medical clinic at 1050 Clove Road on Staten Island just after noon.
“They were gasping for air. One had an oxygen mask on.”
At least five people were treated for dizziness, headaches and nausea at local hospitals and released.
The Coast Guard said boaters first notified it sometime before 9:30 a.m. that a strong smell of gasoline was emanating from around the Kill Van Kull just west of the Bayonne Bridge.
By 10 a.m., fire officials said, they had received hundreds of 911 calls from panicked residents along Staten Island’s north shore.
“I was going crazy,” said Rose Feldstin, 55, of Sunnyville. “I thought it was coming from my stove in my house. I was searching all over, but I couldn’t find [the source].”
Connie Pascucci, 65, said she was at an exercise class at Snug Harbor at around 9:45 a.m. when she smelled the odor.
“It was unbearable . . . I thought it was terrorism,” she said.
City workers at Clove Lakes Park, across the street from the medical facility, said the odor forced them to close down their operations site on the grounds from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.
The sickening smell also forced the evacuation of about 50 people at the HIP building, leaving the sidewalks outside strewn with medical workers and patients coughing and gasping as fire and ambulance crews flocked to the scene, offering them oxygen.
The smell hit Queens at around 1:30 p.m., when several dozen people in the area between Beach 90th and Beach 123 streets started calling the FDNY.
Debbie O’Sullivan, 40, of Beach 90th, said the odor made her head hurt.
“It’s worrisome,” she said of the mystery gas.
A spokesman for the city Department of Environmental Protection said four hazmat teams were dispatched to Staten Island after the agency received several phone calls reporting the smell mid-morning.
But by the time they got there, the workers didn’t smell anything, nor did machines detect any volatile organic compounds in the air, said the DEP’s Ian Michaels. He said the results of further air sampling may be known as soon as today.
One official noted that “a very small amount of gasoline products can produce a very strong odor.”
The Coast Guard has been in touch with New Jersey officials to try to determine whether the source may be from a floating barge or could have occurred during the loading or unloading of gas along the waterfront, officials said.
But Bayonne fire officials said they checked for a suspected gas leak in the morning and found nothing. “It wasn’t us,” one dispatcher said.
Additional reporting by Ikimulisa Sockwell
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Air sick (map graphic)
1. Boaters report gas odor emanating from around the Kill Van Kull, west of the Bayonne Bridge, before 9:30 a.m.
2. Staten Island: Complaints are received from St. George area to around the bridge by 10 a.m.
3. Queens: Complaints received from Rockaways, specifically Beach 90th, Beach 98th, Beach 121st and Beach 123rd streets at about 1:30 p.m.
Source: FDNY