A three-story apartment building collapsed and largely fell into an adjacent construction site in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn on Wednesday, killing at least eight people and injuring 18 others, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said.
Emergency workers were still sifting through the rubble on Thursday morning as they searched for the remaining victims. Officials said they did not immediately know how many people had been in the building, at 1321 Flatbush Avenue.
Mr. Mamdani said that the Department of Buildings and law enforcement officials would investigate the cause of the collapse.
“There are no words for a loss of this magnitude,” Mr. Mamdani said on social media on Thursday morning. “My heart is with the families and loved ones of those we have lost, those who are injured and everyone grieving today.”
The collapse occurred while an excavation was taking place at the adjacent construction site on Bedford Avenue, where the city had approved plans for a three-story building.
What happened?
At 4:01 p.m. on Wednesday, the Fire Department received a 911 call about a building collapse at 1321 Flatbush Avenue, Mr. Mamdani said at a news conference later that day.
Canine units, drones, helicopters and fire trucks were used in the search, alongside excavation machinery, in a search and rescue operation that continued into Thursday. The adjoining wall of an adjacent building was sheared off by the collapse, leaving a staircase, a bedroom and closets exposed to the open air.
Why did the building collapse?
It’s not clear yet. The Department of Buildings said that its engineers were conducting structural stability inspections of nearby buildings, but city records suggested that there had been at least some concern about the condition of the collapsed building.
The building that collapsed was built in 1930 and had four apartments, according to city records. It is in the Little Haiti section of Flatbush, on an avenue lined with shops.
The Department of Buildings said the developers of the adjacent construction site had an active permit for excavation and foundation work. The agency’s commissioner, Ahmed Tigani, told reporters that workers were excavating that site at the time of the collapse.
An inspection related to the construction site and filed with the Buildings Department in March noted that the north facade of the collapsed building was in “poor condition with noticeable cracks.”
A full stop-work order has been issued for the construction site, the department said.
What do we know about the victims and the rescue effort?
The authorities have not released the names of the people who were killed or injured, but at a news conference on Thursday, Mr. Mamdani confirmed that six adults and two children had died in the collapse. Two of the dead were construction workers, he said.
Six of the victims were found dead at the site while two others died later at local hospitals, the mayor said. Eighteen people were also injured in the collapse, including four firefighters, and at least one of the injured was in critical condition on Thursday.
The city has lost “our friends and our neighbors,” Mr. Mamdani said, noting that several victims appeared to be immigrants from Central or South America.
Flatbush is home to a large number of immigrants, according to Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, a local assembly member. After the collapse, Ms. Bichotte Hermelyn said she saw emergency responders pull a toddler from the rubble and a pregnant woman whose husband was searching for her.
Lillian Bonsignore, the city’s fire commissioner, said on Thursday afternoon that emergency responders were still conducting search and rescue operations and had not yet transitioned to recovery efforts. But a rainstorm on Thursday afternoon was likely to complicate and slow those efforts.
What happens now?
The authorities are encouraging people who are unable to reach someone they believe to be affected by the collapse to call 311. People outside the city can call 212-639-9675.
On Thursday afternoon, many residents near the site of the collapse remained indefinitely displaced, though some further down Flatbush Avenue had returned to their homes. The city’s emergency management agency and the American Red Cross have opened a reception center for affected and displaced residents at the Flatbush Y.M.C.A., at 1401 Flatbush Avenue.
Mr. Mamdani said the city had begun to investigate the disaster, with an additional focus on the construction site. The Buildings Department has identified “five entities” associated with the project, and city officials plan to conduct sweeps of 100 other sites the groups are involved with to ensure they are safe.
“If there is anyone or any entity operating in this city that bears responsibility for what happened, we will hold them fully accountable,” Mr. Mamdani said.
Sharon Otterman, Ishani Desai, Sarah Chatta, Mihir Zaveri, Troy Closson, Emma G. Fitzsimmons and Ana Ley contributed reporting.
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