Eight people are dead, including two children, after an apartment building in New York City collapsed into an adjacent construction site Wednesday afternoon, leaving more than a dozen others injured as rescue crews continued searching the rubble Thursday.
The three-story building in Brooklyn’s Flatbush neighborhood collapsed shortly after 4 p.m. Wednesday while construction workers were excavating a neighboring lot near the intersection of Flatbush and Bedford avenues. The cause of the collapse is still under investigation.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani confirmed Thursday that six adults and two children were killed in the collapse. Another 18 people were injured, including four firefighters, Mamdani said. The mayor added that most of the injured are in stable condition at area hospitals, but that one person is in critical condition.
Emergency responders worked through the night searching for possible survivors beneath piles of debris, using heavy machinery and rescue dogs to navigate the unstable wreckage. Officials warned that portions of an adjoining building remained at risk of collapsing.
New York City Fire Department Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore said search-and-rescue operations are still ongoing as crews continue to remove debris from the site.
“To be clear, we have not shifted from rescue to recovery,” Bonsignore said. “We are still in the search and rescue phase. We have moved into a general debris removal, and we are using grapplers to move big chunks of the debris, so we can search beneath them.”
Following the press conference, FDNY announced that rescue operations had concluded around 3:30 p.m. on Thursday and determined there were no additional victims involved in the collapse.
The city’s building department previously said inspectors are on scene assisting with recovery operations and conducting structural stability inspections of nearby buildings. In announcing the conclusion of rescue efforts, FDNY said the city’s Department of Buildings would be taking over the scene.
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Mamdani said the actors involved with the construction site where the building collapsed are connected to roughly 100 other sites in the city.
“There are five main entities involved with this construction site who are associated with approximately 100 other sites across the city,” Mamdani said during the press conference. “Our Department of Buildings is commencing sweeps of those sites today.”
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
