Two children among eight killed in New York building collapse

NEW YORK

New York authorities said on Nov. 12 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.

The three-story property in Brooklyn fell on Nov. 11 af-ternoon into a neighboring excavation site where con-struction workers had been preparing foundations for a planned development.

“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.

The New York Times reported that the youngest victim was aged 9, and that nationalities included Ecuador, Guatemala and Guinea.

New York’s fire department declared Nov. 12 afternoon there were no further victims at the site after emergen-cy workers spent hours searching with drones and ca-nine units.

Officials said the cause of the collapse was not imme-diately clear.

The building, a three-story structure dating from 1930 with four apartments and a commercial space on the ground floor, collapsed onto the nearby excavation site.

According to documents from the city’s building de-partment reviewed by AFP, the construction site had been issued a stop-work order in April due to potential-ly dangerous demolition conditions.

However, work continued, resulting in a $10,000 fine for the company involved.