English
Eight people died, including two children, after a three-storey residential building collapsed in Brooklyn, New York, on Wednesday afternoon. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani confirmed the death toll on Thursday and said more than a dozen others suffered injuries. The collapse has prompted widespread grief and anger across the city.
Building Falls Into Construction Site
The 1930s-era building, which contained four apartments and a ground-floor commercial space, fell into a neighbouring excavation site. Construction workers had been preparing foundations there for a planned development. The collapse also severely damaged an adjacent building, tearing away one of its walls and exposing a staircase, a bedroom and a wardrobe full of clothing.
Stay connected to every major update — subscribe and follow us on the PhoenixQ website and across our social media platforms.
Shop worker James Williams, 60, told AFP he witnessed the moment the structure fell. “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. Fourteen-year-old Kenneilia Reid also described the scene. “When I turned my back, I saw the whole building collapse,” she told AFP.
Victims Identified Across Multiple Nationalities
Among those killed was Gabriel Siguencia, a 22-year-old Ecuadoran national who was working overtime at the construction site when the building came down. His stepsister, Kayla Chimborazo, 20, described a desperate search across multiple hospitals before learning of his death. “We went from hospital to hospital, trying to find him, showing pictures, but nobody knew anything until they told us he passed,” she told AFP.
Chimborazo said her stepbrother had a wife and son back in Ecuador. “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. The New York Times reported that the youngest victim was nine years old. Nationalities among the dead included Ecuadoran, Guatemalan and Guinean.
Prior Safety Violations Raise Questions
Documents from the city’s building department, reviewed by AFP, show authorities issued a stop-work order at the construction site in April. Officials cited potentially dangerous demolition conditions at the time. However, work continued despite the order, resulting in a $10,000 fine for the company involved. So far, no direct link has been established between those violations and the collapse.
Mayor Mamdani said five main entities were involved at the site. As a result, authorities began inspecting around 100 other construction sites across the city associated with those same entities. He promised a thorough investigation and vowed to hold anyone responsible “fully accountable.”
Meanwhile, New York’s fire department declared Thursday afternoon that emergency workers had found no further victims. Teams had spent hours searching the site using drones and canine units. The cause of the collapse remains unclear. In the Flatbush neighbourhood where the building stood, some residents expressed anger over development pressures. “It’s just all about making money. They didn’t care about the danger,” local businessman Winston Bowen, 54, told AFP.
