DiBLASIO: THIS WAS AN INTENTIONAL ACT;
Police Hunt for Other Bombs
2nd Bomb Found at 6th and 27th: Pressure Cooker?

Update: "This was an intentional act," Mayor DiBlasio says.

Meanwhile, Don Lemon has been singing Hillary-scripted sermons about how awful it is that Trump said this was a "bomb" so early.

No bullshit: While he was claiming that was completely, utterly irresponsible, CNN was running a chyron beneath his stupid face reading, and I quote, POSSIBLE SECONDARY DEVICE LOCATED AT 27th STREET.

Yes, Trump jumped the gun -- but please, do go on about the POSSIBLE SECONDARY DEVICE LOCATED AT 27th STREET.

You're media -- you're allowed to speculate and jump the gun. No one expects you to be responsible.

Update: CNN says officials have ruled out an exploding gas main as the problem.

Now Obama, fresh off telling all sorts of great jokes while these explosions were happening, is finally being briefed.

Priorities, people. Priorities.

Obama's Me-Time is too precious to interrupt for a run of the mill explosion.

Reuters is now speculating it may have been "construction materials" left int the dumpster -- from the photos of the site, you can see the scaffolding on the building.

Construction teams put volatile/explosive materials into dumpsters at their worksite?

I don't know if I buy that.

"Numerous injuries," says a FaceBook account called NYCFireWire. It claims it was specifically an "IED."

I'm suspicious of that "IED" claim -- I don't remember ever seeing an explosion determined as being by explosive device in the immediate moments after an explosion. And the additional specificity -- how do you know it's an IED? you just got on scene and the remnants of the bomb, assuming it was a bomb, are scattered -- seems very dubious.

I don't know of any culturally-significant stuff around that area (terrorists love culturally-freighted targets), but the Gotham Comedy Club is near

But that apparently wasn't the location hit.

WPIX, a local channel, says the fire department has confirmed an explosion at 135 West 23rd, between Sixth and Seventh.

It seems to have happened outside an apartment complex called Selis Manor.

WPIX says it's unclear if there were injuries (contra the FireWire posting). It links this picture taken by people near (but not too near) the scene.

Some video below the fold:

Seems to have been a big explosion, but that doesn't mean it was terrorism. I was walking down the street in NYC and there was an enormous explosion that shook the street and blew a manhole cover 30 feet into the air.

I later found it it was an underground electrical transformer exploding.

I also found out, alarmingly, that that kind of thing happens a fair amount.

Update: this guy says NYPD counterterrorism squads are coming...

...but another tweet said it was a gas explosion -- which I'm going to assume it was, until stronger reports say otherwise.

Oddly, the national news channels aren't covering this.

IED in Dumpster? One of the videos had off-camera voices saying "I think it was in a dumpster."

This pic shows a destroyed dumpster:

Earlier today, of course, IEDs were discovered in the trash near that Marine charity run in Seaside, New Jersey.

I still wouldn't rush to assume this is more than a gas explosion. There's a lot of raw power running under NYC's streets.

Oh What a Card!

posted by Ace at 09:12 PM

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