NEW YORK — Firefighters dug through the rubble of a three-story building in Brooklyn after it collapsed at the edge of a construction site Wednesday afternoon, killing at least two people and trapping others beneath the wreckage.
News helicopter footage showed scores of firefighters scouring the debris in the borough’s Flatbush section, clambering over the rubble pile and using their hands and power saws to get through the ruins.
At least 10 people were rushed to a hospital with injuries, including four in critical condition, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said during a news conference. New York City Fire Department officials said their search and rescue operations would continue for several days.
“We do not know how many people were missing overall,” said FDNY’s chief of department, John Esposito.
About 250 firefighters were working the scene, Mamdani said. At around 6:30 p.m., firefighters pulled a dust-covered person — still alive and moving — out of a hole they had dug into the rubble pile, hoisting them up on a stretcher and rushing them to a waiting ambulance.
The building that collapsed — a mixed-use structure with apartments sitting atop businesses — had been perched at the edge of a lot where another one-story building had been torn down for a construction project. The site was being excavated, and the building that fell down filled the construction pit with bricks and wood.
New York City’s buildings commissioner, Ahmed Tigani, said that at the time of the disaster, construction workers were on site doing excavation work adjacent to the building that collapsed.
Another building that shared a wall with the collapsed structure remained standing, but its wall was shorn off, exposing the rooms inside, including a bedroom and closets filled with clothing.
A drone hovered over the site as firefighters dug by hand, tossing chunks of rubble aside. Rescuers also used dogs to sniff for survivors. As darkness fell, firefighters used flashlights to illuminate the area where they worked.
“This has been an incredibly challenging and fast-moving situation, with precarious wreckage to navigate and dangerous voids beneath the surface,” Mamdani said. “This type of rescue is exactly what the FDNY trains for.”
FDNY Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore said the rescue teams were performing “dangerous and perilous” work. “Every move is choreographed,” she said.
One firefighter sustained minor injuries, fire officials said.
Phone and email messages seeking comment were left with the architect, property owner and general contractor listed in city records as being associated with the construction project.
One resident of the collapsed building, Anderson Velez, told the New York Post he was at work when his wife called and said she and their two kids, ages 7 and 2, were trapped in the wreckage.
“She called me when the building collapsed while she was inside with rubble on top of her. She was screaming for someone to help get my son out and then the call cut off,” he said.
Velez said he later learned that his family had been pulled from the rubble alive.
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