He Had Demolition Skills

The Fire Department explains how to go about blowing up your own home:

Dr. Bartha’s real estate agent, Mark Baum, said that Dr. Bartha was something of a handyman and had worked on the house himself. “He had engineering skills,” he said. “He had carpenter skills.”

One official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing, said of the gas line, “I don’t know what’s in this guy’s mind, but it was definitely tampered with.”

Investigators were also seeking to determine whether the furnace and hot water heater had also been tampered with, the official said.

The city’s chief fire marshal, Louis F. Garcia, said the hose had been attached to a valve near the gas meter. “This certainly is against any kind of plumbing code,” he said. “It shouldn’t be there.”

. . .

Chief Garcia said that natural gas reaches the explosive range when it replaces 5 percent to 15 percent of the air in an enclosed space. An explosion can be sparked by anything from a telephone to static electricity.

The portion of the inch-and-a-half hose that was in the basement, which investigators were looking for in the rubble yesterday, was attached to the main gas line before it reached the meter, fire officials said. The gas line leading out of the meter was much smaller in diameter, one utility official said, suggesting that would have speeded the volume of gas escaping into the house.

Chief Garcia said the blast began in the basement, in the front of the house. He said that Dr. Bartha was found on the top of the stairway, on the first floor, directly above where the hose was attached to the gas line. He and other officials said the hose stretched through the basement. By last night Fire Department investigators had determined that it had not reached the furnace at the back wall of the house, though they did not know where it ended, one official said.

Police Department officials were careful not to describe Dr. Bartha as a suspect, and he has not been arrested or charged with any crime. But prosecutors in the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, are examining the possibility of bringing felony arson charges against him, officials there said.