They knew each other in passing, as customers, as neighbors, linked only by the fact that their businesses shared the same few blocks of the East Village in Manhattan.

But on Thursday, as about a dozen owners of restaurants, clothing shops, dry-goods stores and other establishments either demolished, damaged or left financially crippled in the aftermath of the gas explosion that leveled three buildings on Second Avenue last month met, they shared something else: a desire to rebuild.

“We’re alive,” said Roop Bring, the owner of Sam’s Deli, a bodega that operated for decades on the ground floor of 123 Second Avenue in Manhattan before being destroyed as a result of the explosion, which, according to the authorities, erupted in the basement next door, at 121 Second Avenue. “That’s what important.”