Police say a suicidal Mount Vernon hospital doctor may have accidentally set off a huge blast that caused a Manhattan brownstone to crumble, injuring 15 people.

The doctor, 66-year-old Nicholas Bartha, owned the Upper East Side building and may have inadvertently set off a natural gas explosion in a botched suicide attempt. Police say Bartha, a part-time emergency room doctor at Sound Shore Medical Center, was the most seriously injured of the 15 victims.

Bartha, who is going through a difficult divorce, may have been forced to sell the brownstone.