Divorce Court Battle Leads to Building Explosion in Failed Suicide Attempt

We must pray and act wisely to strengthen the family. Years ago, we were warned of terrors if we continue to tolerate family destruction. Today we see them.

This is just one of many reasons we must pray and act diligently and wisely to strenthen the family. Years ago, we were warned of the terrors that would happen if we continue to tolerate family destruction. Today we live daily in those terrors we once feared. Yet we tolerate what we once feared because we've become accustomed to it. We're accustomed to it until it happens to us or our loved ones directly. And, it always does. Someone is shot or blown up, and we say it won't happen to us. It happens to us, and someone else says it won't happen to them.

Taken from Yahoo News in Australia

NYC building collapses after 'gas' blast

A four-storey building has collapsed in Manhattan, injuring 15 people after an apparent gas explosion that may have resulted from a failed suicide attempt.

Witnesses reported a deafening explosion before the building on New York's upscale Upper East Side came crashing down, shattering windows across the street.

Smoke billowed from the debris during a frantic rescue operation and continued to emerge for hours after the morning blast.

Ten firefighters and five civilians were injured."I saw the building go up in such flames and called to my wife to go running," said Yaakov Kermaier, a rabbi who lives next door. "I ran into the building (next door) to get my baby."

Neighbours had reported a strong smell of gas before the explosion, the gas utility company said.

The gas leak may have been the result of a suicide attempt by the building's owner, Dr Nicholas Bartha, New York Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta told reporters.

The owner was rescued from the rubble and hospitalised with severe burns.

A police source later said the doctor had "taken a turn for the worse. He has severe lung damage."

If the man survives, he could face criminal charges, the source said.

The building owner recently wrote a rambling, 15-page email to his estranged wife in which he seemed suicidal and indicated he did not want her to have the multi-million-dollar building, the police source said.

Bartha and his wife, Cordula Bartha, have been involved in rancorous divorce proceedings since 2001, and court documents revealed a bitter dispute over the Manhattan building, valued in 2002 at more than $ million ($.7 million).

Bartha, 66, has worked since 1979 as an emergency room doctor at Phelps Memorial Hospital Center in the suburb of Sleepy Hollow. The couple has two grown daughters.

Court documents say Bartha subjected his wife, a Jewish woman born in Nazi-occupied Holland, to cruelty and placed "swastika-adorned articles and notes affixed around their home, and became enraged when she removed them."

A New York court eventually ordered that the property be auctioned to divide marital assets. In one court filing from March, Bartha's wife said he would probably refuse to leave the home were it auctioned and that he had said to her "many times that he hopes to 'die in my house.'"

The apartment building on 62nd Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan housed some doctors' offices, but police said the building collapsed before any patients were due for their morning appointments.

"I saw a lot of smoke, people scurrying everywhere," CNN talk show host Larry King, who happened to be on the scene, told reporters.

"There was one huge boom. ... It sounded like a bombing would sound, like the bombing of London in World War Two."

The Upper East Side is one of New York's most upscale neighbourhoods with many luxury apartment buildings near Central Park.

Resources for Information on Suicide and Depression

• Medline Plus
  Symptoms, prevention, wealth of information
• Suicide.com
  A Matter of Life or Death
• Suicide Hotlines
  For Suicide Prevention and Emotional Crisis
• Yellow Ribbon
  International Suicide Prevention Program
• SPAN USA
  Suicide Prevention Action Network U.S.A.
• National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
  1-800-273-TALK
• Centre for Suicide Prevention - Informational, research
  in Calgary, Canada
• FAQ About Suicide
  NIMH - National Institute of Mental Health
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  Multidisciplinary study on suicide
• National Center for Health Statistics
  Self-inflicted Injury/Suicide
• Metanoia
  Suicide - If you are thinking about Suicide, Read This First
• National Center for Injury Prevention and Control
  Suicide Fact Sheet