A plumber’s SUV exploded Friday morning in a quiet Queens neighborhood, damaging nearby homes and cars and shaking neighbors, officials said.
The Infiniti QX56 exploded on 133rd Street near 131st Avenue in South Ozone Park around 6:45 a.m., just minutes before the plumber and his family were about to get into the vehicle.
“I was cooking,” plumber Jeremy Harricharam told the Daily News Friday, adding that he was about to leave the house with his wife, child and mother so he could drop them all off before starting his work day.
“This happened five minutes before we were all going to get in this vehicle,” Harricharam, 41, said, pointing to the pitted wreckage of his SUV. “I don’t know what to think. I’m just in shock.
No injuries were reported.
FDNY officials believe a ruptured gas torch that plumbers use to sweat and solder pipes triggered the explosion.
The massive explosion rocked 133rd Street, according to witnesses. It turned the SUV into a piece of molten metal, damaged two cars it was parked next to, blew out windows and damaged the exteriors of six nearby homes, an FDNY spokesperson said.
Firefighters extinguished the flames within minutes. The force of the explosion was so enormous that the FDNY called in the NYPD Bomb Squad to assist in the investigation.
No crime was immediately expected.
Six lithium-ion batteries intended for the SUV’s power tools also caught fire, but this was secondary to the gas tank exploding. The ruptured gas may have leaked into the SUV until something ignited it, an FDNY official said.
Harricharam’s brother, Dinell, confirmed that the plumber’s tools were inside the SUV, but he couldn’t think of anything that exploded.
