At least two dead after New York building collapses as fears grow for ‘secondary' incident
On Wednesday afternoon (11 November), a three-storey building in Brooklyn, New York, collapsed at the edge of a construction site.
At least two people were killed with others trapped beneath the wreckage.
New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani said fire crews responded to the incident within one minute of the first 911 call as he described it as a ‘fast-moving situation’.
Officials said during a news conference that at least 17 people were in hospital with injuries, including four in critical condition.
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It’s said that among the injured are seven children and a firefighter. Mamdani said about 250 firefighters were deployed to the scene, and it is unclear how many people were trapped in the wreckage.
The fire service is now working carefully to prevent a ‘secondary collapse’.
Footage showed people being pulled from beneath the rubble pile.
Firefighters and police officers had pickaxes and power saws as they worked through the wreckage for hours, punching holes through the ruins to pull people from beneath piles of twisted wood and brick.
New York City Fire Department (FDNY) officials said the search and rescue operations would continue into the night with it unclear in the early hours of this morning (UK time) whether people might still be trapped.
“This has been an incredibly challenging and fast-moving situation, with precarious wreckage to navigate and dangerous voids beneath the surface,” Mamdani said.
“This type of rescue is exactly what the FDNY trains for.”
The fire service’s Chief of Department John Esposito said: "We continue to search any void spaces looking for any victims, and we've removed a few from that collapse area.”
He added that they are working to prevent a ‘secondary collapse’ while they search through the rubble.
And FDNY Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore said: “Collapse operations are extremely dangerous because, as you know, the risk of disrupting the piles by moving too quickly.”
Crews used sniffer dogs and torches as darkness fell in a bid to search for people. Officials warn that the search will stretch for days.
Bonsignore added that officials don’t ‘know how many people are still in the collapse zone’ as emergency responders will be at the site ‘for quite some time’.
Mamdani said that the NYC Department of Buildings and law enforcement agencies are leading an investigation into the cause of the collapse. He called the ‘collapse devastating’ and displace residents were taken to the local YMCA with the Red Cross providing support and finding places for them to stay.
“As we rebuild, the City of New York will stand alongside those impacted at every step of the way,” the mayor added.
When the building fell, construction workers were excavating an empty lot next door for a new building.
Much of the collapsed building’s rubble — a mixed-use structure with apartments sitting atop ground-floor commercial space — wound up in a huge pile inside the construction pit. And another building that shared a wall with it remained standing but its wall was shorn off.
Jess Battison
