By Patrick Wall and Tom Liddy
DNAinfo
HARLEM — Water and gas main breaks on St. Nicholas Avenue that opened up a gaping sinkhole in the street have left at least 5,000 customers without gas in the area and some may not see service restored for more than a week, officials said.
Con Ed spokesman Chris Olert said that hundreds of workers have descended on the area near the rupture, on St. Nicholas Avenue and 152nd Street in an attempt to fix the problem.
"We're working 24/7," he said. Crews have been brought in from Orange and Rockland counties as well as Brooklyn to assist in the effort.
Officials said that a large swath of Hamilton Heights, from 155th Street to the 140s in the south and from Bradhurst Avenue to Seventh Avenue had no gas as of Saturday.
Crews were working to remove water from the 8-inch gas main that was damaged when a 12-inch water main broke on Friday afternoon, leaving a massive crater in the street.
Olert said that Con Ed workers have to make sure that the lines into every building in the area are leak-free.
Landlords, he said, are responsible for ensuring the integrity of those pipes.
The utility also has to replace valves that no longer seal properly because of the lack of gas pressure, as well as damaged pipe.
An Office of Emergency Management official told other emergency workers that water service had been restored as of Saturday.
Some residents however, said that the water was brown on Friday and cloudy the next day.
Chad Hughes, a manager for three buildings on the block, said that he got the runaround from Con Ed.
"They're not giving me any sort of when, where, what or how," he said. "I asked who to sue and [Con Ed] said DEP and DEP will tell me Con Ed."
He said that he was first told that there was an issue with the gas on Saturday.
"I'm lucky my pipe didn't explode," he said. "I'm nervous now.
"Basically they're not informing the public."
Pein Kuenlom, who manages Super Plan laundromat, said that when the hot water went out Friday, they had to ship their business down to their 32nd Street location.
"We pay the rent here," Kuenlom said. "There's no customers, no money. I don't know how we're going to pay the employees."
A Con Ed emergency van was going up and down the block using detectors to sniff for gas while crews dug up the street. A customer information truck was also on the scene to help those affected by the outage.
Some residents said that the sinkhole was a ticking time bomb.
"That sinkhole ahs been sinking for years," said Cecile Goyette, who lives in a building right near the site of the water main break.
"They would come out and patch it up."
And another resident, who only gave his name as Melvin, 35, said: "They've done patchwork and filled it in with some gravel, but they never really smoothed it out."
Crews were hoping to reopen St. Nicholas Avenue near the site of the sinkhole by Monday morning.
