NEW YORK — Someone may have improperly tapped a gas line before an explosion that leveled three apartment buildings and injured nearly two dozen people, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday as firefighters soaked the still-smoldering site and police searched for at least two missing people.
‘‘There is a possibility here that the gas line was inappropriately accessed internally’’ by people in one of the destroyed buildings, but officials have to get access to its basement to explore it further, de Blasio said.
The injury toll from Thursday’s blast in Manhattan’s East Village section rose from 19 to 22, with four critically injured.
Police were searching for at least two people: Nicholas Figueroa, who was on a date at a sushi restaurant in the building where the destruction was centered, and Moises Lucon, a worker there. There may be a third person unaccounted for, the department’s chief of detectives, Robert Boyce, said.
Preliminary evidence links the explosion to plumbing and gas work inside the building.
Inspectors with utility Consolidated Edison had been in the building to check on ongoing work to upgrade gas service. The utility said the work didn’t pass inspection, so gas wasn’t introduced to the line, and the inspectors gave instructions and left. Con Ed said inspectors didn’t smell gas.
But 15 minutes later, the sushi restaurant owner smelled gas and called the landlord, who called a general contractor, Boyce said. No one called 911 or Con Ed, de Blasio said.
The contractor, Dilber Kukic, and the owner’s son went into the basement and opened a door, and then the explosion happened, burning their faces, Boyce said.
The building had an existing gas line intended to serve the sushi restaurant; the work underway was to put in a bigger line to serve the entire building, Con Ed president Craig Ivey said.