Miss Camacho was a guard at Hunter College School of Public Health in Manhattan and had previously lived in Puerto Rico where she won an award for “Peace Officer of the Year.”
The explosion also injured her mother mother who has been taken to hospital, said Ayman El-Mohandes, the Dean of the School of Public Health.
She praised Miss Camacho for her “readiness to respond and help whenever help was needed.”
She said: “My sincere condolences go out to her family and to all of you who knew her and loved her.”
Relatives of Miss Tanco said that she came to New York from Puerto Rico when she was a teenager so she could be close to her father.
Cousin Diana Cortez said: “If you were sick, she came to your home and cooked for you and cleaned for you.”
The explosion caused horrific scenes which New Yorkers said reminded them of the September 11 2001 attacks. Flame shot 50ft into the sky and vast plumes of smoke spread across the city.
Residents said that windows were blown out, bricks rained down from the sky and people on the street were thrown 15ft into the air by the force of the blast.
Witness Mitch Abreu, 23, said: ‘It was loud, like boom, boom! It rocked the whole block. It looked like the (Twin) towers all over again. People covered in dust and covering their mouths.”
Mercedes Williams, who was half a block away, said: ‘It almost felt like it was an earthquake.’
At the bottom of one of the two buildings was a store called Absolute Pianos with nine apartments above above it and at the bottom of the other was a Spanish Christian Church with six tenants above it.
Initial fears of a terrorist attack were quickly ruled out. New York mayor Bill de Blasio said it was a “major explosion” and that it was “based on a gas leak” with no apparent indication of foul play.
He said it was a ‘tragedy of the worst kind’ because there was no warning and added: “Our hearts go out to the family’s involved, we are spending every effort to locate each and every loved one.”
