Thick smoke from a still-young fire, which had billowed above an entire city block early Thursday morning in Sunnyside, Queens, suddenly, and ominously, was sucked back inside.

It was a telltale sign to firefighters of what was about to happen, and what they could not avoid.

A firefighter hastily put on his helmet, a half-second before the flash. The smoke then exploded into a fireball that catapulted across the street and simultaneously enveloped seven firefighters in a black curtain of dread.

Except, when the smoke cleared, they were all still standing. Alive.

“We have a bit of a miracle here,” New York Fire Department Commissioner Daniel A. Nigro said. And videos of the explosion to prove it were shared on social media.