The man killed in a massive Staten Island shipyard explosion has been identified as a 56-year-old old worker from Queens.
Xiaoyuan Li, of Flushing, was killed and 36 people, mostly firefighters, were hurt when a fire sparked a massive explosion at May Ship Repair at the dry dock located in Mariners Harbor Friday.
Two firefighters and a fire marshal were seriously hurt.
FDNY firefighters were responding to reports of two workers trapped in a confined space at the dry dock when they found a fire in the basement of a 150-foot-by-150-foot metal structure at the rear of the facility around 3:30 p.m., according to the FDNY.
About 50 minutes after the blaze broke out, the building was rocked by a deafening blast that caused “serious injuries to multiple FDNY members,” FDNY Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore said Friday.
Nadia Adam, the executive vice president of May Ship Repair Contracting Corporation, told the New York Times that the victim was a subcontractor who had worked with the company on multiple projects, adding he had a wife, a son and a daughter.
She said that the dock had been under construction for nine months before the fire broke out, and described her company as a family-owned business with fewer than 50 employees.
“Safety is our first priority,” Adam told the Times. “Understanding what happened is our first priority.”
The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
Rose Abuin / New York Daily News
Emergency responders are pictured after an explosion and fire at a shipyard on Richmond Terrace in Staten Island on Friday. (Rose Abuin / New York Daily News)
A fire marshal struck during the explosion suffered serious injuries, including a fracture to the right side of his skull and bleeding on the left side of his brain. He was listed in critical but stable condition at Staten Island University Hospital Friday. Two more firefighters were seriously injured but were listed as stable at Staten Island University Hospital after the blast.
More than 200 firefighters and emergency medical personnel from 68 units responded to the incident. Of the 35 injured FDNY personnel, four were medics.
The fire marshal and the seriously injured firefighter were both struck by the explosion as they searched a confined space for the trapped workers, which made them especially vulnerable to the energy wave emitted during the massive combustion, according to FDNY Chief Medical Officer Dr. David Prezant.
