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The explosion of a 24-inch diameter steam pipe near New York City's Grand Central Station created a 25-foot crater in the middle of an avenue that swallowed a truck. It killed one woman and injured 40-or-so other people. But was it a big enough story to warrant national coverage beyond the Big Apple? CBS decided that it was, assigning Bianca Solorzano to show us the "scalding geyser of steam and debris shot hundreds of feet into the air."
NBC and ABC disagreed, treating the explosion as nationally newsworthy only inasmuch as it is a symptom of a bigger problem. On ABC's A Closer Look, David Muir stated that the incident raised "new questions about the aging infrastructure beneath the streets, not only in New York City but in other major cities as well." Pumping steam heat underground is a century-old urban system that services 1,000 buildings in New York; Philadelphia's subterranean network of pipes stretches for 30 miles; Boston's for 22 miles. NBC's Ron Allen generalized to all sorts of infrastructure that requires repair and maintenance--highway bridges, sewage pipes, dams and so on--that could cost $1.6tr to fix nationwide.
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