Humongous Fire on the Plaza

[Dartgod]

Watching live, this thing is HUGE!

http://www.kmbc.com/news/kansas-city...z/-/index.html

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by gblowfish

I've heard from some of my medical pals that some were taken to St. Luke's and some with burns taken to KU Med. Some people still missing, could be a bad ending.

Latest I've heard: Crews digging to install fiber optic cable for the new construction of the new Polsinelli law firm building hit an 80+ year old gas line.

Boom.

Lawsuit city...

I wonder who did the locates or if they were done at all?

[|Zach|]

Originally Posted by Inmem58

BREAKING NEWS: A victim in the fire speaks:

Well I woke up to get me a cold pop and then I thought somebody was barbequing. I said oh lord Jesus it’s a fire. Then I ran out, I didn’t grab no shoes or nothin’ lord Jesus, I ran for my life. And then the smoke gagged me, I got bronchitis ain’t nobody got time for that.

Repost.

[In58men]

Originally Posted by |Zach|

Repost.

Mother****ers

[Coach]

The news sure love jerkin off on this kind of stuff... they haven't even gotten to the so called death blizzard that is coming towards our way....

Shit...

[TribalElder]

This news has been live for like 4 hours straight. We get it already, go back to hyping the snowpacalypse now. Channels 4, 5, 9, 41 all you ****ers are guilty

[tony77]

very sad

[Coach]

Originally Posted by TribalElder

This news has been live for like 4 hours straight. We get it already, go back to hyping the snowpacalypse now. Channels 4, 5, 9, 41 all you ****ers are guilty

Not to mention that I wanted to watch my shows, but those ****s dun ****ed it up.

[FloridaMan88]

Currently the lead story on the USA Today homepage:

http://www.usatoday.com/

[Stanley Nickels]

Hey, the web stream on kctv5.com is showing Everybody Loves Ray. That's got to be a DMCA violation, right?

[Lumpy]

HOLY CRAP! We were staying in the Country Club Plaza area just 2 weeks ago.

[rtmike]

Just confirmed that coroners' are on site.

[FloridaMan88]

http://www.kansascity.com/2013/02/19...-smell-of.html

Witnesses: ‘Unbearable’ smell of gas, tremendous explosion

By STEVE KRASKE, ERIC ADLER and JUDY THOMAS

The Kansas City Star

Joe Whisler detected the odor even before he got to JJ’s Tuesday afternoon.

“I could smell gas from my car when I got to 48th and Belleview,” said Whisler, of Westwood, who was meeting friends for a drink after work.

“It was overpowering.”

As he walked to the restaurant, Whisler said, he noticed a pipe in the ground at the alley on the east side of JJ’s that appeared to be leaking gas.

“I could hear a hiss of gas and smell it wafting up,” he said.

He met his friends inside and had a glass of wine. About 5:20 p.m., Whisler said, Kansas City firefighters entered the restaurant and told the owners to turn off their ovens and grills and open the doors to the outside. They did as they were told, Whisler said, with employees “covering their faces because of the odor.”

“I said to the lead fire guy, ‘Shouldn’t we evacuate here?’ ” Whisler said. “They told me no, that they had called the gas company. I saw three Missouri Gas Energy workers walking around outside.”

But the odor proved too strong for Whisler, and he left JJ’s about 5:30 p.m.

“The smell inside was so bad I couldn’t stand it,” he said. “It was unbearable.”

Whisler noticed the same pipe leaking gas in the alley when he left the restaurant. He said about 15 customers were in the bar and some were in the dining room when he left.

Whisler’s friend Matt Nichols, who is JJ’s general manager, was one of those still inside. Whisler worried Tuesday night about Nichols and other friends who remained in the restaurant.

“Most of the staff are my friends,” he said.

Whisler was still trying Tuesday night to get a grip on what had happened.

“I’m OK, but I was just 15 minutes from dead,” he said.

Gayla Brockman sensed something was wrong as she stood in an underground parking garage a few minutes before 5 p.m.

The smell of gas was overwhelming.

“It was so apparent,” said Brockman, executive director of the Menorah Legacy Foundation, whose building at 4739 Belleview abuts J.J.’s from the north. “So bad. You have no idea. It is that smell, you know, times 10. That smell on steriods. I knew I was going to pass out.”

Brockman said she went back into her building, told her co-worker to evacuate and alerted Steve Rothstein, who owns the building as well as the apartment complex at 4732 and 4734 Belleview directly west and across the street from J.J.’s.

As Brockman left the building, she saw workers who had been drilling in the street near the alley just steps from of J.J.’s entrance. She rolled down her window and talked to the workers.

“I said, ‘You hit a gas line, didn’t you?’ ” she recalled. “They said, ‘Yeah, we did.’

“I knew something bad was going to happen.”

Rothstein said that after Brockman alerted him, he also went to the parking garage, smelled gas and spoke to a worker.

“He said, ‘We had a break in the gas line,’ ” Rothstein said. “I asked, ‘Have you capped it?’ He said no. I said, ‘Are we safe?’ He said, ‘Yes, we’re safe.’ ”

Rothstein said he returned to his third-floor office that overlooks the roof of J.J’s restaurant. Shortly after that he heard and felt a tremendous explosion.

“I looked outside,” Rothstein said. “The whole roof of J.J.’s had caved in.”

And the fire came soon after.

[keg in kc]

Originally Posted by Coach

Not to mention that I wanted to watch my shows, but those ****s dun ****ed it up.

It was like a local news feeding frenzy tonight. I don't remember how it works, if they're in local sweeps like the network itself is. I mean, I get that it's a big story, but burning the entire night of shows seemed a bit much. But I guess people love to rubberneck. I can only imagine what facebook was like.

[Titty Meat]

Every media outlet in the city still at the scene

[rtmike]

I lost my live kmbc feed.