One worker was dead and four hospitalized Tuesday after a parking garage collapsed in lower Manhattan’s Financial District, toppling cars over each other as concrete floors fell and left other vehicles teetering on the unstable roof.
Mayor Eric Adams confirmed the fatality and said the building had been rendered “completely unstable.” Officials said one worker was trapped on an upper floor and rescued via a neighboring roof.
The building was “all the way pancaked, collapsed all the way to the cellar floor,” Acting Buildings Commissioner Kazimir Vilenchik said.
There were six workers in the three-story building on Ann Street when it collapsed and four were hospitalized in stable condition with injuries, said John Esposito, chief of operations for the Fire Department of New York. He also confirmed the death and said another injured person declined medical attention.
At one point the department pulled out its personnel because of concerns about the building’s stability, and the search was conducted with drones and a robotic dog. Esposito said everybody was most likely accounted for, but searches continued just in case.
“There are some cars in there that are crushed,” he said. “We’re trying to see if we can get up close to make sure there’s nobody in those cars.”
Esposito said one of the survivors was trapped on an upper floor but was alert and called out to responders. He was rescued through a neighboring roof.
Classes at nearby Pace University were canceled and an adjacent dorm and classroom building were evacuated.
“It felt like an earthquake,” Pace student Liam Gaeta said, adding that he heard “a large noise and a big rumbling, and then we all got evacuated.”
Other Pace students described hearing screams and seeing cars falling in the building, which caved in around 4 p.m.
It seemed “like the earth opened up inside, like that’s how violent it was,” said student Jadess Speller, who initially thought a bomb had gone off.
Vilenchik said the building’s certificate of occupancy to operate as a parking garage was filed in 1957. It had “active violations” dating back to 2003, Vilenchik said. There were some current permits filed, including one related to electrical work, Vilenchik said.
An application was filed in 2010 but it does not necessarily indicate previous violations were corrected, he said, adding that engineers are working to determine the cause of the collapse.
Contributing: The Associated Press