By Johnson Alabi with Agency report<\/p>\n
New York authorities said Thursday that eight people, including two children, were killed after a residential building collapsed a day earlier, prompting a frantic overnight search by firefighters to pull people from the rubble.<\/p>\n
The three-storey property in Brooklyn fell Wednesday afternoon into a neighbouring excavation site where construction workers had been preparing foundations for a planned development.<\/p>\n
“This has been a devastating morning and evening for our city,” said New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who announced the latest death toll and said over a dozen more were injured.<\/p>\n
One of those killed was Ecuadoran national Gabriel Siguencia, 22, whose stepsister said in a tearful interview that he was working overtime at the construction site when the building collapsed.<\/p>\n
“We went from hospital to hospital, trying to find him, showing pictures, but nobody knew anything until they told us he passed,” Kayla Chimborazo, 20, told AFP and other journalists.<\/p>\n
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“He just came here to do work to be able to provide for his family back in Ecuador. He’s just the sweetest person,” she added, saying he had a wife and son.<\/p>\n
The New York Times reported that the youngest victim was aged nine, and that nationalities included Ecuador, Guatemala and Guinea.<\/p>\n
New York’s fire department declared Thursday afternoon there were no further victims at the site after emergency workers spent hours searching with drones and canine units.<\/p>\n
Officials said the cause of the collapse was not immediately clear.<\/p>\n
‘Devastating’<\/p>\n
The building, a three-storey structure dating from 1930 with four apartments and a commercial space on the ground floor, collapsed on to the nearby excavation site.<\/p>\n
An adjacent building was left ripped open with one of its walls torn away, exposing a staircase, bedroom and a wardrobe full of clothing.<\/p>\n
Shop worker James Williams, 60, told AFP he witnessed the building collapse after hearing loud banging noises throughout the morning.<\/p>\n
“I smelled the smoke from the fumes, and I was watching bricks fall. But to see, like two minutes later, to see the building collapse and fall, it was just devastating,” he said.<\/p>\n
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“There were people trying to get out … I saw somebody on the side of the staircase, and I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t even really want to think about that.”<\/p>\n
Another witness, 14-year-old Kenneilia Reid, told AFP: “When I was walking by, I started seeing dust all of a sudden, and I was like, what is going on? When I turned my back, I saw the whole building collapse.”<\/p>\n
‘Fully accountable’<\/p>\n
According to documents from the city’s building department reviewed by AFP, the construction site had been issued a stop-work order in April due to potentially dangerous demolition conditions.<\/p>\n
However, work continued, resulting in a $10,000 fine for the company involved. No link has yet been established between these violations and the building collapse.<\/p>\n
Mamdani said five main entities were involved at the site and that authorities had started “sweeping” 100 other construction sites they are associated with around the city.<\/p>\n
The mayor promised a thorough investigation and to hold anyone responsible “fully accountable”.<\/p>\n
Some people in Flatbush, a mostly Black neighbourhood where the building collapsed, voiced their anger at gentrification and development after the incident.<\/p>\n
“It’s just all about making money. They didn’t care about the danger,” businessman Winston Bowen, 54, told AFP on a pavement opposite the collapsed building. (France24)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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