Schenectady

The city owned the Paige Street home that exploded Sunday afternoon and had it slated for demolition — but the natural gas utility was never shut off.

City building inspector Eric Shilling said Monday the two-story wood frame home at 310 Paige St., which exploded around 3:05 p.m. Sunday likely as the result of a gas leak, was one of the several hundred properties the city has taken through foreclosure since 2012.

But he said there are no city rules in place that direct what should be done with the utilities of such a home.

He said the task of permanently shutting down gas service to a property involves digging into the street, and sometimes the city isn’t sure it wants to shut off heat and have the house fall into further disrepair. While the gas was on in the Paige Street house, the electricity had been shut off at the meter.

“It’s a fairly, fairly big program to go through all of these houses,” Shilling said about keeping up with the list of vacant homes the city now owns. “We hadn’t gotten to the point of writing a policy.”

City Public Safety Commissioner Wayne Bennett said Monday that State Police cadaver and state fire rescue dogs did not turn up evidence of people either living or dead in the home’s rubble, but he cannot be 100 percent sure that someone wasn’t inside. Bennett said there were rumors in the neighborhood that two people had been squatting in the house, which has been vacant for at least the last year and a half. He said demolition crews, who started their work Monday afternoon, will sift through everything to rule out the presence of human remains.

Shilling said the city’s Department of General Services had no recent complaints about people disturbing the locks or boards on the house.

The homes on either side of the explosion sustained some damage, such as a caved-in carport on one side and smashed windows and siding on the other. But no injuries were reported.

Bennett said an exact cause of the explosion isn’t known yet, but the fact that almost nothing remains of the house suggests a natural gas leak.

Demolition crews likely will be done removing debris from the scene sometime Tuesday, said City Fire Chief Raymond Senecal, who directed all other questions about the investigation to Bennett.

National Grid also is involved in the investigation, but had said Sunday that it had no record of complaints about a natural gas smell coming from the home.

The utility did a pressure test Monday afternoon between Albany Street and the blast site. A second gas leak was discovered prompting the fire department to evacuate the area for a short time before the painstaking cleanup job resumed.

Virginia Limmiatis, spokeswoman for National Grid, said the leak was found in the 300 block of Paige Street, and crews were immediately dispatched.

“We’re working very closely with local law enforcement and the fire department,” Limmiatis said.

The Paige Street house was one of more than 700 properties the city threatened to take through foreclosure in 2012. The house’s owner at the time, James Miller, owed $14,654 in back taxes. In the end, fewer homes citywide were actually seized as owners paid the delinquent property taxes.

City assistant corporation counsel Rachel Ward, who handles Schenectady’s distressed properties’ list, said the city took control of 310 Paige St. in October 2012 and it was moved into the Schenectady Urban Renewal Agency in March 2013. Properties are moved into the urban renewal agency so that the city can avoid paying school taxes on them.

City Zoning Officer Steve Strichman, who runs the urban renewal agency, referred all questions to the city’s law department.

Ward said houses listed for demolition are typically there because the fixes are too expensive to make the property marketable. She said that the utilities to 310 Paige St. should have been shut off as the house was never going to be considered for resale.

Shilling stood behind Mayor Gary McCarthy’s aggressive push to acquire and deal with abandoned properties, despite Sunday’s blast. McCarthy was with other mayors Monday at an event in New York City, and referred all comment to Bennett.

“We need to have a talk about these issues and bring all the agencies together,” Shilling said. “We’ll learn as we go.”

lstanforth@timesunion.com • 518-454-5697