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About 168 police and fire officials in NYC are responding to an explosion at an occupied building on 116th Street and Park Avenue in Manhattan that happened at 9:13am this morning.

The cause of the explosion was a gas leak that had been reported to ConEd 15 minutes earlier.

The explosion happened at 1644-1646 Park Avenue. ConEd recieved calls about a heavy gas odor 15 minutes prior and sent two trucks to the building. They arrived just before the explosion, which caused a 5-alarm fire and the building to collapse.

The FDNY was on the scene 2 minutes later.

The New York Times reports at least two people are dead. A senior city official suggested that there would most likely be more fatalities. As of 2pm, there were 20 injuries being treated, at least two of them life-threatening. Over a dozen people are still missing.  

Mayor de Blasio spoke to the press earlier this afternoon.

“This is a tragedy of the worst kind because there was no indication in time to save people,” the Mayor said.

AP/Mark Lennihan

Rescue workers remove an injured person on a stretcher after a possible explosion and building collapse in the East Harlem neighborhood of New York, Wednesday, March 12, 2014

 

Kate Shindle, an actress and resident of East Harlem, woke up to the explosion and tweeted: "It blew the doors open on my building, two blocks away and around the corner. Shook the ground all the way to second avenue," she posted on her Twitter account.

ABC has obtained a video of the immediate aftermath of the explosion, taken by a witness: