Thanks to an anonymous commenter for pointing out that the Strib article has been updated again.
According to the latest news on the explosion and fire in Minneapolis — now attributed to a — “gas leak”, one body has been recovered from the rubble at 516 Cedar Avenue South:
A body was recovered Thursday afternoon from the wreckage of the three-story Minneapolis apartment building destroyed by a New Year’s Day explosion, fire officials confirmed.
“At approximately 1:55 p.m. Minneapolis Fire Department officials confirmed that one body was discovered in the structure at 516 Cedar Ave. S.,” said a statement by Assistant Fire Chief Chérie A. Penn.
Penn said the victim has been turned over to the Hennepin County medical examiner’s office. She said crews will continue to remove debris until dark and will resume their work Friday morning.
Notice that it wasn’t until after DHS arrived on the scene that the fire chief started to talk about a gas leak:
The cause of the fire is still under investigation. At a news conference Thursday afternoon, the Minneapolis fire chief said the fire in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood was most likely caused by a natural gas leak.
Fire Chief John Fruetel said Thursday afternoon that witness accounts of a natural gas smell and the explosion strongly suggest that gas was involved.
Fruetel added that the fire began either on the second floor or third floor.
But Fruetel also said that investigators are not certain what caused the fire and they may never be certain. He said four or five investigators have been on the site around the clock, looking for evidence such as debris patterns.
So the authorities are pushing the natural gas leak story, all the while covering their posteriors by saying “we may never know”. But the gas utility, CenterPoint Energy, is not sticking to the script. They seem unwilling to take the fall for what happened on Cedar Avenue yesterday.
Interestingly enough, the spokeswoman for CenterPoint both contradicted the fire chief, and agreed with me about what a natural gas explosion would look like:
A spokeswoman for the natural gas utility CenterPoint Energy strongly discounted natural gas as a likely cause.
“We had no natural gas in the area,” said Rebecca Virden, basing her information on CenterPoint’s own investigation and testing in the area.
If it were attributed to natural gas, Virden added, “the roof would come off, the walls would come out.”
She offered that if there was a gas involved, “it could be a different type of gas.”
The fire chief responded:
Asked about CenterPoint’s denial, Fruetel said, “I’m just basing it on what my investigators say.”
He said officials haven’t determined it was natural gas, but said that is what they’re focused on.
Or, more accurately, that is what Homeland Security is focused on.
And then:
The chief called the scene an active investigation that has early on ruled out any signs of an explosive device. Homeland Security personnel were on the scene in the aftermath of the fire that sent 14 people to hospitals, six in critical condition.
But how does he know? The investigation has barely begun. The crews are only now starting to sift the rubble. An arson investigation takes more than a few hours.
And there most assuredly was an explosion at the site yesterday. How can he tell us with a straight face that they are ruling out an explosive device?
This whole business is fishy.
From the Beltway sniper to the Boston Marathon bombing, the federal government always plays down any possibility of terroristic behavior, especially when culture-enrichers are in the vicinity. If the incident can’t be written off as an accident, then the media are sent haring after some tobacco-chewing gun-toting white supremacists as the most likely culprits.
And if, despite their best efforts, Islam pokes its head into the scene, they trot out the tired old mantra: “There is no known connection with terrorism.”
DHS is desperate that this be written off as an act of God. Or Allah. Or, with luck, the gas company.
And the fire chief seems to be reading from their script.
As for the possibility that the explosion was caused by propane — I’ll buy that. Remember the would-be Times Square bomber, with his propane tanks and his fertilizer…
This is the best article I’ve read on here in a while.
I don’t want to indulge in speculation but the Somali diaspora in both the US and the UK alarms the hell out of me. Their peculiar overlap between enrichment and Islam is like thermite.
Except this time, all the fertilizer seems to have been supplied by the DHS.
Again, I said it earlier, the Obama admin will squelch the truth if is bomb making. o not trust these traitors.
Info from separate articles suggest at least one of the five property owners is missing …
“Ahmed Muse, one of five owners of the grocery store, said he arrived at the store at 8 a.m. There was what he called “an electrical shock” in the building, and police were called. When he went outside to talk to the officers, an explosion erupted on the second floor, blowing out the windows and scattering glass on the street below. A police squad car reported the fire at around 8:16 a.m., Nelson said”
&
“Omar Hassan approached police Inspector Medaria Arradondo after the news conference. His friend Ahmed Farah Ali lived in the building and hasn’t been found. Neither Ali nor his roommate was answering their cellphone. His uncle in Connecticut hadn’t heard from him, and he wasn’t at Hennepin County Medical Center, where some victims were taken, Hassan said.
No one by that name had been admitted to the University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview, on Riverside Avenue S., or North Memorial Medical Center, either.”
&
Farah Ahmed said his brother, his uncle and his friends own Otanga Grocery, which was consumed by the blaze.twin cities link
I remember how the Pentagon brass immediately rushed out after the Ft. Hood to state Islam had nothing to do with it.
I’d wager that the DHS does something similar they send their goons to places where explosions happen and tell/threaten the local authorities to adhere to the party line or else.
Look if enrichers from Somalia are behind it, it would be a terrible political embarrassment to Obama and the Democrats. This cannot be tolerated.
Family of residents who live in the building report that three people are still missing. Yet a backhoe is already taking down the building, which would be extremely dangerous to enter due to all the fire and water damage.
Obummer will say its not terrorism if it is and won’t say anything if its not!
When that person said there was no natural gas in the area, did they mean there was no gas feed to the building, or no gas service to the building (from their company)?
There are 40,000 Somali Muslims in Minneapolis.
Of those, 20,000 are male.
Of those, between 5,000 and 10,000 are ages 16 to 29.
Of those, at least 20 are known to have been radicalized and gone to fight in Somalia.
It is reasonable to assume that for every one we know of, there are 10 we don’t.
Perhaps 20.
At the low end, that means that 2% of Somali males between the ages of 16 and 29 are involved in radical activities. This includes bomb making, weapons training, explosives, etc.
At the high end, that becomes 8%.
It may be higher.
The building that exploded at 516 Cedar Avenue is believed to have housed at least 10 young adult male Somalis.
The Mosque surely had 50-100 regular male attendees.
Therefore, it is a near certainty that radical Muslims frequently were present and interacting in that building, or the mosque, or the immediate vicinity.
This assessment is based on random chance only. If there was an actual coordinated radical mission afoot, it is likely the building was populated almost exclusively by radical islamists.
Radical Muslims do not interact solely for the purpose of debating the fine points of Shariah. They interact to do and plan radical activities. Activities involving explosives and sharp objects.
Therefore, there is a real possibility, even a likelihood, that actual bomb making was occurring at 516 Cedar prior to the explosion.
The only way to believe that this analysis is wrong is to deny the possibility that bomb making is occurring anywhere in the Islamic Somali community. At all. This would require denial of all the facts above, not just the analysis.
That sort of denial is a dangerous form of malpractice and unfitting to anyone entrusted with public safety.
I urge all involved to aggressively investigate the 516 Cedar explosion with the above analysis in mind.
The location of this explosive fire has a violent history:
2012 report of incident at location for Otanga Grocery Store …..Ex-Somali soldier is arrested in stabbing death of roommate
Also consider this cut/paste segment from BareNakedIslam’s post:
***
A recent FreeRepublic comment mentioned:
Free Republic link wrong . . .here is corrected link:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3107486/posts
Ahmed Muse described an “electrical shock”, in the building, not a smell of gas.
Maybe it was the result of a vat of lard frying up pork rinds to sell in the Halal store, that exploded in such fashion? We all know there is never any terrorist types of activities in and around any mosques. Especially not one in Minnesotastan where the haram twerking Ellison and Somali immigrants like to hang out.
It will be interesting to see if CenterPoint starts singing another tune since the stormtroopers, er umm I mean the truth seeking Islam friendly agents of DHS arrived.
An electrical shock or spark can start a mighty conflagration if the proper elements are about. Like Vlad said, ‘Fertilizer’?
Pingback: Minneapolis: Explosion and fire destroys Somali apartments/business, many injured « Refugee Resettlement Watch
Are our intelligence services incompetent? Only if you believe they are actually on our side.
Cedar Avenue fire latest updates via myFoxTwinCities
“But CenterPoint Energy maintains they had no reports of a gas leak in the area. Representatives say there is no evidence of natural gas in the ground and there are no leaks in the lines nearby.”
In our litigious society, we will know if there was a gas leak if ‘innocent’ victims file lawsuits against the gas company….
No lawsuits = no gas leak – unless the NSA/CIA/DHS decides to spend black ops money to ‘settle’ with the victims of the gas leak (i.e., pay off the families of dead terrorists the way that Palestinians used to pay off the families of dead terrorists).
Demolition Of Building Destroyed By Fire, Search For Victims Continues via CBS
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — The search for two people believed to be missing after a massive apartment fire in Minneapolis will continue Friday morning.
Crews began tearing apart the building at 514 Cedar Avenue South on Thursday and discovered the body of one person who didn’t make it out. Meanwhile, we’re starting to get a better idea of what may have started the fire that sent 14 people to the hospital.
The Minneapolis Fire Chief said people have reported smelling natural gas before the explosion, but officials said the cause is still under investigation and likely won’t be known for some time.
We caught up with one of the victims who had to jump to safety. Abdirashid Nur woke up to the explosion on the first morning of the New Year. He’s a school bus driver.
In his underwear, he hit the window and jumped out from two floors up to safety. Nur injured his leg while escaping the building and was limping when our crews caught up with him. He also spent about 20 minutes injured on the ground before getting medical attention.
He’s one example of all these victims who now need some help. Friends are helping Nur out, one giving him a coat, and another a place to stay. Donations at local community center are coming in fast. He’s just grateful to have survived since not everyone did.
Demolition of the building continues Friday as well as the search for victims still unaccounted for. Crews are being very careful and respectful in their search, taking the building apart piece by piece. They’re hoping for the best and not to find any more victims.
That search will begin after sunrise.
“Donations at local community center are coming in fast.”
Zakat – Muslim ‘charity’ given with priority to Muslims committing jihad.
http://www.shariahfinancewatch.org/blog/2012/08/28/how-zakat-funds-jihad/
From what I have read, this apartment was occupied mostly by singe men who were immigrants from Somalia. These immigrants are basically unskilled and uneducated, so their understanding of fire hazards is primitive. (Airlines flying pilgrims to Mecca have been caught on fire by passengers cooking their lunches over gas camping stoves.) A gas stove in a mud shack in Somalia presents no risk, but one in a closed apartment in freezing temperatures in Minneapolis can be a “bomb.” Even if there were no natural gas in the building, what’s to stop a tenant from using a propane heater or stove? The U.S. should be granting visas to skilled and educated workers, not primitive refugees from one of the most backward countries in the world.
EXCEPT: The bombed-out building was literally surrounded by a mosque – and the majority of American mosques have imams who actively condone violent jihad.
http://www.meforum.org/2931/american-mosques
Additionally, in Muslim countries, Muslims have been known to rush out of Friday prayers at their local mosques to commit heinous acts of mob violence against Christians.
Thanks for linking to that study. It was the first sociological look at behavior in American mosques – can’t remember now if it was one hundred or two hundred…At any rate, it was a sufficient number to be able to observe what people do in their ‘worship’ services.
Thus, the correlation among specific observations- rigid dress codes & separation for women, the lining up of men in distinct rows, etc., all the way down to which arm the imam chose for his watch – and the numbers of pamphlets touting violence, gave the observers some indication of jihad orthodoxy in each place.
They concluded from the sample that about 20% of American mosques are NOT violent. I was surprised it was that high…i.e., the “tiny minority” of peaceable folk was bigger than I thought. My guess would be that those folks are probably resident Americans of several generations and largely come from places like Iran, places where they were successful but made a decision to give up on their homeland, self-exiling when the radicals took over the formerly western-oriented institutions. These are the groups where it isn’t exceptional for women to be educated and seek professional positions.
Thanks, Dymphna! 🙂
If Obama gets to hit the links, then I do, too. 🙂
Second body found in Minneapolis apartment fire rubble via StarTribune.com
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More at link . . .http://www.startribune.com/local/238600831.html
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