Emergency personnel wielded automated devices after firefighters were pulled from the collapsed building due to unstable conditions and checked the site for any further losses, but officials said they believe all victims have been accounted for.
Reuters quoted city police commissioner Kishant Sewell as telling reporters that we have no reason to believe this was anything other than a structural collapse.
Video footage captured by Reuters from the scene, in Manhattan’s financial district of the World Trade Center and the New York Stock Exchange, showed a rescue operation in progress and multiple cars stacked on top of each other amid crumbling concrete slabs.
John Esposito, New York City Fire Department Chief of Fire Operations, said one person was pronounced dead at the scene, four others were taken to area hospitals for their injuries and a sixth person who was injured refused medical treatment.
All six were described as workers who were in the car park when it collapsed.
This was a very dangerous situation for our firefighters, he said at a press briefing in the late afternoon.
Esposito said the firefighters who were ordered out of the building were still inside conducting inspections as “the building was continuing to collapse.”
He said robotic devices were then deployed, marking the first time firefighters had flown a drone over a fallen building to conduct a search.
Authorities said Pace University, a private campus whose students, faculty and staff use the parking lot, were evacuated as a precaution.
“This building is very unstable,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams told reporters.
Eyewitnesses said that the collapse was rapid and without warning.
“It all happened very quickly,” said Thai Nguyen, 35, who lives in Chinatown and is manager of the nearby Kollective Klub.
Our store is 2 blocks from the parking garage, and we also have a hotel next to us. He added that people ran inside asking if they could turn to our store.
Sandy Imhoff, 78, who lives in an apartment next door on the same street, said she fled her home with her two cats when her building began to shiver from the force of the collapse.
NAA