A normal day in Downtown Pittsburgh became a tense scene around noon on Monday after an underground explosion rocked the area. A wiring system from Duquesne Light malfunctioned and caught fire, causing the blast that blew out manhole covers along Grant Street, and caused thick, black smoke to billow from underneath. Austin Fairbanks and his wife were visiting Pittsburgh from Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, and were preparing to check out of the Drury Plaza Hotel. Fairbanks was leaving the hotel to pick up his car from the valet when he saw the scene along Grant Street.
Attorney Steve Stallings told KDKA-TV he heard the sound in the Joseph F. Weis Jr. U.S. Courthouse at Grant and Seventh Avenue. “We were in a jury trial across the street in the federal court on the eighth floor, and I heard an explosion,” Stallings said. “I turned to my colleague and said, ‘I think that’s an explosion!'” Pittsburgh Public Safety confirmed the faulty underground wiring as the cause of the fire, and no evacuated buildings or injuries were reported.
