Sonic Boom Down the Block

I actually was able to sleep last night. I am convinced it is because I actually wrote out my sadness yesterday. I came home … watched Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and then crawled off into bed and passed out like a dead woman. A dead happy woman.

At some random point, early this morning, it must have been around 5 am … I was awoken by an enormous BOOM. Not only did the sound itself wake me (it was like an enormous clap of thunder, random, huge) – but it shook my house – and my bed moved from its position out into the room a little bit.

I had been so fast asleep – I assumed it was thunder – which made me happy – I love storms … and I went back to sleep.

I woke up with my alarm at 5:45. And began my morning. My precious 3 hours before I have to go to work. I realized, to my deep chagrin, that I had run out of coffee. I cannot begin my morning without coffee. Not possible. The store across the street from me opens at 7. So I crawled back into bed, fell asleep, and woke up again at 7.

I walked outside. The New York skyline to my right was in the full glory of sunrise. The sun was still very low in the sky, beaming through the tall buildings, and the rest of the skyscrapers – the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building, were all smudgy and purple … like a Monet … and the Hudson – the Hudson was an indescribable color. Somewhere in between silver and purple and a deep dark blue. The air was chill. It was dawn. I stared at the view for a while, happily. Such beauty.

I had forgotten the sonic boom of thunder … but I did notice that there were helicopters hovering above my neighborhood … filling the air with a steady insistent roar. I noticed it and assumed that maybe there was a traffic jam in the Lincoln Tunnel or something, and these were the traffic-copters. Odd, though – the quiet lilac skyline to my right … and these loud buzzing copters.

I started to the deli … and noticed at the end of my street … what looked like 726 fire engines. A festival of whirling lights.

Clearly, that was no clap of thunder. I asked the guy at the deli and he didn’t know … everyone in the deli was talking about the sonic boom – and how their furniture had moved, too – pictures fell off the wall, etc. What was it? There’s construction going on at the end of my block … maybe a gas line exploded?

Later that morning, fully jazzed on coffee, I headed to work. By that point, the whirling lights were gone, but the end of the street was blocked off, there was a parked fire truck, firemen everywhere, crowds of people, and those helicopters still above.

I stopped a woman and asked her if she knew what had happened. Apparently, a car had zoomed up the hill and crashed directly into a house – but then – the car itself burst into flames. It exploded – I mean, it had to have been massive to wake me up and to move my bed. Just the crashing into the house would not have been enough to wake up an entire neighborhood … could it? It was the explosion which resonated. Could a small car make such a huge explosion? Even if it “just” crashed into a house? I’m still confused by it. Could the car have crashed into … an electrical wire … or … ??

The driver of the car died. The house burned to the ground. I don’t know if the residents were home.

It’s weird … I’ve never really heard an explosion in real life before. At least I don’t think I have. In movies, sure … but not in real life. I watched the second World Trade tower explode … but I was on a bus, and couldn’t hear it. I have a friend who worked on 18th Street, blocks and blocks and blocks away from the financial district … so damn far away … and when the planes hit, she said all of the windows buckled in and out … and you could feel the impact shiver through the entire building.

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10 Responses to Sonic Boom Down the Block

  1. Allison says:

    i don’t know if this is possible, but i heard a loud boom around the same time this morning….is it possible that the sound jumped the hudson?

  2. wutzizname says:

    Thinking further about what it might have been…could it be that the car hit a gas line in the building? Seeing as how it burned to the ground, is it possible that it hit a gas line inside the house, and that’s what actually caused the concussive blast?

    You said a car, not a semi truck, so I doubt that anything going even as fast as 80-100 mph could affect a house so much that furniture slid inside it.

  3. melissa says:

    Way back when I was a child, a house across the street from mine had a gas leak and exploded. (fireball out the back of the house). It definately made a boom…

  4. Mr. Bingley says:

    i heard the 93 wtc bombing, but i didn’t hear september 11th, even though i was in the same location.

  5. Bill McCabe says:

    Actually, he didn’t crash. He was sitting in the car when it exploded. Police believe explosives were involved, possibly tied to a domestic dispute.

  6. Wutzizname says:

    I heard that there is a bit of competitive rivalry among New Yorkers over parking spaces, but Geezus….

  7. red says:

    Found out more: apparently he had a propane tank in his car.

  8. red says:

    So perhaps it only appeared that he had crashed into the house – because of the incineration around him.

  9. Mr. Lion says:

    1) Natural gas lines typically don’t explode in such a manner, even when they burst and the gas is ignited. Unless they’re in a very tightly contained area, the gas will just ignite and burn until they shut it off.

    2) Cars also don’t explode in that manner. While the amount of gasoline in a fuel tank does indeed have more than enough potential energy to make a rather massive explosion, it won’t do it in liquid form. For it to explode, it needs to be rendered aerosol and mixed with a large amount of air. In 99% of all car crashes in which the fuel tank is punctured, the fuel will just burn.

    Now, a propane tank most certainly will cause a rather significant explosion, but it has to be detonated. If you open the valve and light the stream of gas, it will simply burn off as would a natural gas line.

    However, if you attach a small charge to said tank and rupture it, thereby igniting the entire volume of gas in an enclosed space, well, kaboom.

    Short version: In almost all instances, violent explosions are not accidents, or at least not solely so.

  10. red says:

    Mr. Lion – Turns out that it was some kind of “domestic dispute” and the guy did it on purpose. More than that, I do not know. Horrible.

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