New York firefighters still treating deadly collapse site as potential rescue operation
Eight people died after a three-storey building in Brooklyn collapsed at the edge of a construction site, New York City's mayor said Thursday, as torrential rain hampered rescue efforts.
A day after Wednesday's late-afternoon collapse, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani said the city would examine five companies associated with a construction site adjacent to the collapse and 100 more sites connected with those entities.
Six of those killed in the collapse were adults, including two construction workers, while two were children. Two of the eight victims died in hospital, while others were pronounced dead at the scene.
Eighteen people were injured in the collapse and rescue operation, the mayor said, including four firefighters. One person is in critical condition. He praised the efforts of first responders, some of whom responded within a minute to calls of an emergency in Brooklyn's Flatbush neighbourhood.
"People are alive today because of their heroism," Mamdani said.
The side of a Brooklyn building that partially collapsed is shown on Thursday. (Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images)
"We always assume more people are there until we access the ground," said New York City Fire Department Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore. She earlier told local WNYW-TV that heavy rains forecast through the afternoon could leave muddy conditions that might complicate search operations.
Several hours later, the fire department said it had concluded that no more victims were in the rubble and had completed its rescue mission.
Among those killed and injured were people from Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador and Trinidad, Mamdani said.
Two of the dead were construction workers, he said.
He described how some workers who survived joined firefighters in digging out survivors, thanking "those who ran toward danger when this building collapsed, and in the hours afterward."
James Williams, who works at a deli across the street, said he heard loud banging at the site all day Wednesday and looked outside to see bricks falling.
"Two minutes later, the building collapsed," he said.
"We heard the boom and we all rushed outside and saw smoke and dust everywhere," said Brigitte Anama, a hair stylist at a salon across the street.
Customers and stylists jumped up and ran onto the sidewalk, which was engulfed with dust. Anama saw emergency workers pulling people from the site, including what appeared to be a child.
"People were saying, 'Pray for the baby, pray for the baby,'" she said.
Scores of firefighters and police officers wielding pickaxes and power saws clambered over the rubble pile overnight, punching holes through the ruins to pull dust-covered people from beneath piles of twisted wood and brick.
Flatbush Avenue, a busy thoroughfare in Brooklyn, remained at a standstill on Thursday morning as firefighters picked through the rubble.
Rescuers used dogs to sniff for survivors. Firefighters used orange buckets as they removed debris from the rubble piles, trying to reach people who may be trapped.
About 250 firefighters were working at the scene, Mamdani said earlier.
Firefighters search for victims on Thursday in the rubble a day after a building collapsed in Brooklyn in New York City. The cause of the collapse is under investigation. (Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images)
The building that collapsed — a mixed-use structure originally built in 1930, now with apartments sitting atop businesses — had been perched at the edge of a lot where another one-storey building had been torn down for a construction project. The site was being excavated, and the building that fell down filled the construction pit with bricks and wood.
Employees of the city's building department, as well as firefighters, investigate the scene from a rooftop. (Yuki Iwamura/The Associated Press)
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.
At about 6:30 p.m., firefighters pulled a dust-covered person — still alive and moving — out of a hole they had dug into the rubble pile, hoisting them up on a stretcher and rushing them to a waiting ambulance.
First responders rescue a person from the rubble of the collapse. (Ryan Murphy/The Associated Press)
One resident of the collapsed building, Anderson Velez, told the New York Post he was at work when his wife called and said she and their two children, aged 7 and 2, were trapped in the wreckage.
"She called me when the building collapsed while she was inside with rubble on top of her. She was screaming for someone to help get my son out and then the call cut off," he said.
Velez said he later learned that his family had been pulled from the rubble alive.
