NEW YORK: Eight people were killed and at least 17 others, including three firefighters, were injured when an apartment building in Brooklyn collapsed into an adjoining construction site, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said on Thursday.
The three-storey building in the Flatbush area collapsed at around 4pm (2100 GMT) on Wednesday, tumbling into the neighbouring construction site where excavation work was under way, according to officials.
The city’s Fire Department had earlier told Reuters that four people were in critical condition following the collapse.
New York television station WABC-TV reported that at least four survivors, including a pregnant woman, were pulled from the wreckage around two to two-and-a-half hours after the incident.
Officials said the number of people inside the 1930s-era building at the time of the collapse was not immediately known. They also did not disclose how many workers were present at the construction site.
City Fire Department Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore said seven children were among those affected by the collapse. However, she declined to specify whether any of the deceased were children or adults.
Mamdani said the city’s Department of Buildings and law enforcement agencies were investigating the cause of the collapse.
A firefighting crew that happened to be in the neighbourhood reached the scene within a minute of the incident and helped pull the first victims from the debris, authorities said at a news conference on Wednesday evening.
Television footage showed rescue workers accompanied by search dogs combing through the rubble. Crews were also removing debris in buckets in an effort to locate people who might have been trapped in spaces beneath the wreckage.
John Esposito, chief of the city’s Fire Department, said rescue teams could take several days to search the entire site for potential victims.
“We do not know how many people are missing overall,” he said.
Around 250 fire and emergency medical services personnel were deployed to the scene as rescue operations continued.
