New School writing student Nora Brooks was on the Upper East Side with her parents and husband after a trip to the Met on March 26, when she got a phone call from her roommate.
“I’m so sorry. I tried to save your cat, but she kept running away. I just had time to put my sneakers on and get out,” her roommate said, frantically apologizing about the beloved cat, Sylvie.
Brooks didn’t yet know that she and her husband lost their home and all of their belongings in a deadly gas explosion that killed two men and leveled three buildings, including theirs, at the corner of Seventh Street and Second Avenue.
It was everything Brooks had since she moved from Portland, Oregon two years ago to attend The New School and live with her husband, puppeteer Matt, in his rent-controlled apartment in the East Village.
“I didn’t understand that the building was on fire. I thought I could still get my cat,” Brooks said . After her roommate’s phone call, Brooks and her husband, Matt rushed downtown.
Smoke filled the street as emergency workers and neighbors frantically ran over strewn bricks and other debris. Brooks tried to find out what had happened but police told her to go to a “control center.” She didn’t know what that meant, much less where it was.
She turned and saw the crumbling apartments overflowing with roaring flames and thick black smoke. Finally, standing behind firefighters aiming their water hoses at the building, a police officer told Nora that what they were aiming at was just the facade of her building, everything behind it had been destroyed by the fire.
The next day, the Brooks’ went down to see if there were any of their possessions that could be salvaged from the rubble but they police did not let them on the site.
Brooks’ husband, a puppeteer, who has worked for LAIKA films (the makers of “Coraline”) and now works for the Jim Henson Company, lost most of his life’s work and tools in the flames .
“We joked later that if we’d been there he would have been tossing me puppets and machines from the window,” the New Schooler said.
Brooks lost all of her books and two years of handwritten notes for her thesis. She is currently pursuing an MFA in writing at The New School and describes her thesis as a “hybrid novel” with strong poetic influences, about the idea of the American frontier.
Neighbors said they saw some of her husband’s puppets splayed out amid the rubble, a hint of what she would recover. But when she asked if she could, officials said all the debris had been brought to a dump, according to her.
A gofundme campaign organized by the Brooks’ friend, Jessica Glenn has raised $39,100 as of April 16 to help the Brooks recover. They were still short about $11,000 of their $50,000 goal.
“It’s completely changed our condition from, ‘I’m not sure what’s going to happen next,’ to, ‘This could possibly be survivable,” Brooks said. The Brooks are now living at a friend’s apartment in Bushwick and then plan on couchsurfing at friends around the city.
Through it all, Brooks has been assured and positive,keeping other sufferers in her thoughts.
“I’m so grateful that we were out of the apartment and that it happened at a time of day where not a lot of people were around,” she said.
She remembers seeing family of one of the men who was killed in the blast, Nicholas Figueroa, looking for him in the rubble and going up to them and introducing herself, telling them she lived in the building too. Figueroa had been missing and his body was later found in the aftermath. He was laid to rest on April 7.
“The worst part is their death,” Nora said, “I can’t even imagine what it must be like for those families.”
Brooks has felt overwhelmed since the blast, sometimes happy that she and her husband were unscathed but also depressed, or angry at the landlady, who could face criminal charges for the murder of the two explosion victims.
During a recent visit to the site, Brooks surveyed the blue barricades that mark the plot where her home once stood. She wore clothes donated to her by her friends, having lost everything in the explosion.
“It’s easier to be here now then it was the first time I came back,” she said. “When something like this happens it’s hard to know what the impact will be, it takes time to recuperate and get past moments of shock.
Tamar is a poet, writer, New York-lover and dweller. She studies jounalism+design at The New School.
