NEW YORK: Rescue teams worked through torrential rain on Thursday and found no more victims in the rubble of a New York City apartment building collapse that killed at least eight people, prompting Mayor Zohran Mamdani to order an investigation into dozens of linked construction sites.
A day after Wednesday’s late-afternoon collapse in the city’s Brooklyn borough, Mamdani said the city would examine five companies associated with a construction site adjacent to the collapsed building and 100 more sites connected with those entities.
The construction site was undergoing excavation work that started earlier this year, historical satellite imagery showed. An official notice filed by a construction company in September informed authorities that the earthwork included “rock blasting”, official records showed.
Six people were found dead in the wreckage and two others died later from their injuries, city officials told reporters at the scene of the collapse. Two of those killed were children. The six adults killed included two construction workers.
Those injured in the collapse and its aftermath numbered 18, including four firefighters who led the rescue effort, officials said.
Municipal building inspectors fanned out across the city to inspect the other sites “to ensure that if there is anything for New Yorkers to be worried about that we are on the scene and we are doing something about it”, the mayor said at a press conference.
“If there is anyone or any entity operating in this city that bears responsibility for what happened, we will hold them fully accountable,” Mamdani said.
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The apartment building, which Mamdani said was home to several immigrant families, was built in 1930 and consisted of four residential units, according to official records. Two Ecuadorians were among the dead.
The building collapsed at around 4pm (2100 GMT) on Wednesday and destroyed a wall of an adjacent residential block, exposing a staircase, closets and a bedroom.
Three other addresses on the same side of the street were ordered vacated as a precaution until safety inspections could be conducted, officials said.
On Thursday, two excavators were seen at the construction site clearing the debris under pouring rain. Mamdani said rescue work by some 250 personnel was continuing around the clock.
“We will be here until we are 100 per cent sure there are no more people trapped,” Fire Department Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore told reporters shortly after midday.
“We always assume that there are more people there until we can access the ground. So until we remove some of the bigger debris and are able to search beneath them, this will remain a rescue operation.”
Several hours later, the Fire Department said it had concluded that no more victims were in the rubble and had completed its rescue mission.