OMM Newsroom
Eight people were killed and at least 17 injured after a residential building in the Brooklyn borough of New York City collapsed onto an adjacent construction site. Rescuers were checking whether anyone had survived beneath the rubble.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani confirmed the death toll on Wednesday, Nov. 11, after the collapse in the Flatbush neighborhood, AnewZ reported.
Mamdani said on Thursday that three firefighters were among those injured. The New York City Fire Department had earlier told Reuters that four people were in critical condition.
The three-story building collapsed at about 4 p.m. on Wednesday (9 p.m. GMT), falling onto an adjoining construction site where excavation work was under way. Officials said they did not know how many residents were inside the building, which was built in the 1930s, or how many workers were at the construction site.
Fire Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore said seven children were among those affected by the incident. She did not clarify whether any of them were among the dead.
Firefighters who were nearby arrived at the scene one minute after the collapse and began pulling people from the rubble, officials said at a news conference on Tuesday evening. WABC-TV reported that at least four people, including a pregnant woman, were rescued between two and two and a half hours after the collapse.
About 250 firefighters and emergency medical workers were dispatched to the scene, according to the fire department.
Search teams combed through the rubble with the help of search dogs, removing debris bucket by bucket in an effort to find possible survivors. Local television footage showed the operation continuing.
Fire department chief John Esposito said a thorough search of the site could take several days. He said rescuers would need that time to search the entire area for possible victims.
“We don’t know how many people are missing overall,” Esposito said.
Mamdani said the city’s Department of Buildings and law enforcement agencies had launched an investigation to determine the cause of the collapse.
