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A three-storey apartment building in Brooklyn collapsed into a construction pit next door on Wednesday afternoon, killing at least six people and injuring at least 17 more. By Thursday morning, firefighters were still digging through the rubble by hand, and officials warned the death toll is likely to rise.
The collapse, at 1321 Flatbush Avenue in the Flatbush neighbourhood, is now one of the deadliest building failures New York City has seen in years — and it happened in seconds, in front of a construction site where excavation work was already under way. What makes this disaster different from an ordinary structural failure is the question now facing investigators: did the digging next door help bring the building down?
What happened in Flatbush
The building came down at about 4 p.m. local time on Wednesday (21:00 GMT), toppling sideways into the open excavation pit at 2625 Bedford Avenue, where workers were digging the foundations for a new building. The 1930s structure was a four-unit, mixed-use building — apartments sitting above ground-floor commercial space — and much of its rubble ended up in a huge pile inside the pit.
Fire crews arrived within a minute of the first emergency call, according to the fire department, and began pulling people from the wreckage almost immediately. Within hours, two people were confirmed dead. Then, through the night and into Thursday morning, the toll climbed: a third body was recovered at 4:45 a.m., two more just after 6 a.m., and a sixth early on Thursday, the fire department confirmed.
At least 17 people were taken to hospital, four of them in critical condition. Seven children are among the casualties, officials said, though they have not confirmed whether any children are among the dead. One firefighter was treated for minor injuries. About 250 firefighters were working the scene, and the search — using dogs, drones and vacuum trucks — was expected to continue for days.
The rescues that kept hope alive
Amid the rising toll, rescuers pulled several people out alive. On Wednesday night, firefighters dug a hole into the rubble pile and lifted out a woman who was still alive and moving, carrying her to a waiting ambulance on a stretcher. A pregnant woman was also rescued from the wreckage, and more survivors were pulled out as the night went on.
One of the most closely watched rescues involved a family trapped inside the building. Anderson Velez, a resident, told the New York Post he was at work when his wife called to say she and their two children, aged seven and two, were trapped with rubble on top of them. The call cut off. He later learned all three had been pulled from the wreckage alive.
"This has been an incredibly challenging and fast-moving situation, with precarious wreckage to navigate and dangerous voids beneath the surface," Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at a news conference on Wednesday. "This type of rescue is exactly what the FDNY trains for." Fire Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore described the work as "dangerous and perilous", adding: "Every move is choreographed."
The question at the centre: the excavation next door
The cause of the collapse remains under investigation, and officials have been careful not to blame anyone yet. But one fact has already become the focus of the inquiry: when the building fell, construction workers were excavating the empty lot immediately beside it.
New York City Buildings Commissioner Ahmed Tigani noted the excavation in his public remarks, and the fire department confirmed that much of the collapsed building's rubble landed inside the construction pit. The neighbouring building that shared a wall with the collapsed structure is still standing — but its wall was sheared off, exposing bedrooms and closets to the open air.
City records list an architect, a property owner and a general contractor associated with the construction project. Messages seeking comment were left with all three on Wednesday, according to the Associated Press. Investigators will now examine the building's condition, the construction activity and whether safety rules were followed — the same kind of inquiry that follows any structural collapse where the cause is not immediately obvious.
That question matters beyond this one street. New York's building stock includes thousands of ageing low-rise structures standing shoulder to shoulder with active construction sites, and excavation beside an older building is one of the most delicate operations in urban construction. If the digging played a role here, the findings could reshape how such work is supervised across the city.
What happens next
The immediate priority is the search. Officials still do not know how many people were inside the building when it collapsed, or how many may remain trapped — which is why the death toll, confirmed at six on Thursday morning, is expected to climb. Some reports citing ABC put the toll higher still, but the figure confirmed by the fire department stands at six, and the search continues.
City inspectors were checking nearby buildings on Thursday morning, streets around the site were closed, and a reception centre was opened at the Flatbush YMCA for displaced families — at least eight households were forced from their homes.
The longer investigation will take weeks, at least. For now, the Flatbush collapse stands as a reminder of how quickly an ordinary city street can become a disaster scene — and how much can depend on what is happening in the empty lot next door. When a building falls in a crowded neighbourhood, the first hours are about rescue; the months that follow are about answers.
Sources: Associated Press via Arab News | Al Jazeera. For context on how cities prepare for sudden disasters, see our explainer on why governments stockpile for war or disaster, and on flood disasters in the region, the Bhutan glacial lake outburst flood alert.