Hundreds of New York City firefighters sifted through the rubble of a collapsed apartment building early Thursday as dozens of onlookers, including family members of the building’s residents, gathered.
Among them were Abubakar Diallo and his nephew Habib N’Diaye, who were growing frustrated as Mr. N’Diaye waited for updates on his younger brother.
“We called 311, they don’t have any information. We called the hospital, they don’t have anything,” said Mr. Diallo, 47.
Mr. N’Diaye, 32, lived in the three-story apartment building that collapsed on Wednesday afternoon. He said he was waiting for information on his brother, Mamadou Bhoye N’Diaye, 31, and their relative, Mamadou Bhoye Barry, 23.
Sirens blared and drones hovered overhead well past midnight in Brooklyn’s Flatbush neighborhood. The collapsed building had taken down the wall of an adjacent building with it, exposing the interior of its apartments to the open air.
The collapsed building largely fell into a neighboring plot that was a construction site. It was in that pit that around 250 firefighters worked through the night.
Emmanuella Carilus, 32, who has lived in the neighborhood for 12 years, was still taking in all that had happened. “I was shocked, I was shook,” she said while on a late-night walk. “I live literally right behind the building. It sounded like a big boom, and you just heard a bunch of screaming,” she said, describing the moment the building collapsed at around 4 p.m. on Wednesday.
She said she was praying for anyone who was trapped and their loved ones and that she was concerned about the effects of the dust from the collapse on her neighborhood.
Fire officials said that they did not know how many people might be missing and that the search operation was likely to continue for days.
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