NEW YORK — At least two people were killed and 17 others injured on Wednesday when a three-story apartment building collapsed in New York City, tumbling into a large hole created by a construction site next door, officials said.
The collapse, which took place just after 4 p.m. near the intersection of Bedford and Flatbush Avenues in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, sheared off the wall of an adjacent three-story building and left a staircase, bed and closets exposed to the open air.
The four-unit apartment building dating from 1930 collapsed and tumbled into the adjoining construction site where excavation work was underway and the cause was under investigation, said John Esposito, the city’s fire department chief.
Scores of firefighters and police officers wielding pickaxes and power saws clambered over the rubble pile for hours, punching holes through the ruins to pull dust-covered people from beneath piles of twisted wood and brick.
The number of people who were at home when the building collapsed was not immediately known, officials said. They did not say how many workers were on the construction site at the time of the collapse.
At least 17 people were hospitalized with injuries, including four in critical condition, officials said during a news conference. New York City Fire Department officials said their search and rescue operations would continue into the night.
“This has been an incredibly challenging and fast-moving situation, with precarious wreckage to navigate and dangerous voids beneath the surface,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said. “This type of rescue is exactly what the FDNY trains for.”
The cause of the collapse was under investigation, but New York City’s buildings commissioner, Ahmed Tigani, noted that when the building fell, construction workers were excavating an empty lot next door for a new building.
Much of the rubble from the collapsed building — a mixed-use structure with apartments sitting atop ground-floor commercial space — wound up in a huge pile inside the construction pit. Another building that shared a wall with the collapsed structure remained standing, but its wall was shorn off, exposing the rooms inside, including a bedroom and closets filled with clothing.
About 250 firefighters were working the scene, Mamdani said.
City Fire Department Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore said the overall number of known victims stood at 19 people, 7 of them children. She declined to say whether the two dead were children or adults. A firefighter also suffered minor injuries, she said.
Local television news footage showed rescue workers with search dogs combing through the building’s ruins, removing debris in buckets, seeking any signs of people who may have been trapped in voids beneath the debris.
New York television station WABC-TV reported that at least four survivors were pulled from the wreckage about 2 to 2 1/2 hours after the collapse, including a pregnant woman.
Esposito said it would take rescue teams several days for the entire site to be “searched for all potential victims,” adding, “We do not know how many people are missing overall.”
Source: Saudi Gazette