UPDATE: While the comments below are all basically still valid, it turns out that I may be completely-wrong in this case. As part of its investigation, ConEd drilled some 50 holes in the area around the building yesterday and found significant ground saturation of gas, which is an indicator of a leaking main. Might still be in the customer's facilities, but less likely now. The plaintiffs' lawyers got lucky...
Coned spends a lot of money on its infrastructure. Unlike the City, which would rather do some dumb highly visible thing. That's why we get more water main leaks than gas line explosions.
ConEd inspected that main recently, and judged that it was good for at least another 3 years (whereas many mains of that age are not found to be good and are replaced promptly). Coincidentally, there was a routine visit on that street last week by a ConEd sniffer truck, which sniffed nothing. It's gonna be the commercial kitchen in the basement of the church, or the 140 feet of new gas line installed by a licensed plumber in the building last summer, not the gas main. Every one is praying that it is the main, of course, so they have a deep pocket to sue. This main was old but in good shape generally. Maybe someone should have called the night before when they smelled gas initially. Reports were that some people slept with their windows open because of the gas smell. Amazing; I would have been on the phone to ConEd, 311 or 911.
For a while, the media was complaining that it took ConEd about 15 minutes to arrive to the gas leak report after being dispatched. They say their usual response is within 30 minutes. It seems to me that if they had arrived sooner, we probably would have had a bunch of dead ConEd workers on the scene as well as dead residents. Bottom line, I think, is that by the time somebody finally decided to call, it was too late. Sad. So very sad.
PS One reason I suspect the commercial kitchen is that, having owned restaurants, I know that commercial gas ranges, friers, char-grills, etc., will happily let you blow the place up if you don't handle them properly. They are set up to use a lot more gas than home appliances, and have no fail-safes. More than once, I had crews blow out the pilot lights on the range, or turn off the charbroiler at the main and then turn it back on, extinguishing the pilot, or, worse, have one guy turn the broiler off on the collective shutoff without closing the individual valves, then have another guy turn it back on at the collective shutoff without realizing valves were open. And the equipment doesn't care while the gas hisses on. A potent potion of screaming, training, threats of firing, warnings of bodily harm, threats of bodily harm, actual firings and more training later, we realized that we had to administer this potion regularly or risk that one of our folks was going to blow our place up. It's why very good general managers make a trip down the equipment line every night without fail on the way home to make sure all pilots are on and no valves are open. They find mistakes regularly. So...maybe it's my prejudice, but when I hear "commercial kitchen in the basement", being operated by church members, I have to think that that's Suspect Number One.
On Terry's point, you should see what someplace like Third Avenue looks like when the utility markings are made in a spot before digging. It's a kaleidoscope of colors of paint; looks like graffiti. And when the street is opened, it's fascinating to see everything that's down there are has to be worked around. It's quite something.
