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Liam StackEmma G. FitzsimmonsTroy Closson and Sharon Otterman
Here’s the latest.
Rescue workers stopped searching the rubble of a collapsed apartment building in Brooklyn on Thursday, saying they had determined there were no more victims.
Eight people, including two children, were killed in the collapse.
Earlier Thursday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at least 18 people, including four firefighters, had been injured when the building collapsed on Wednesday afternoon. Rescuers spent almost 24 hours digging through the site, even as a downpour on Thursday left shin-high pools of water on the surrounding streets.
“This has been a devastating evening and morning for our city,” Mr. Mamdani said. “We are mourning too many people who we love.”
Mr. Mamdani said the rescue effort had included hundreds of firefighters who worked through the night. He repeatedly praised the Fire Department’s response, saying the department had arrived at the scene “within one minute” after receiving the emergency call.
The collapsed building was adjacent to a construction site, where excavation had been ongoing.
Mr. Mamdani pledged “a full and thorough” investigation into the collapse, and said the Department of Buildings was “commencing sweeps” of roughly 100 other sites across the city that were “associated” with “five entities” that had ties to the construction site, he said.
He said that he was “incredibly troubled” by reports that construction continued at the site even though an inspection report showed there were cracks in the north facade of the collapsed building. He said the city would hold anyone responsible for unsafe conditions “fully accountable.”
The three-story building at 1321 Flatbush Avenue collapsed just after 4 p.m. on Wednesday. It fell into the gaping hole created by excavation at the construction site.
The collapsed building contained four apartments, with a commercial space on the ground floor, according to city information. Seven children were among those injured, officials said.
The rescue operation involved K-9 units, drones, helicopters and fire trucks alongside excavation machinery. The wall of an adjacent building was torn off by the collapse, leaving a staircase, a pink bedroom and closets filled with clothing exposed to the elements.
The Department of Buildings said the developers of the construction site adjacent to the collapsed building had an active permit for excavation and foundation work on the lot. The city’s buildings commissioner, Ahmed Tigani, told reporters that workers had been excavating it at the time of the collapse. A full stop-work order has been issued for the site.
Leanor Yupa waited at the site for news of her 22-year-old son, Gabriel Siguencia, an Ecuadorean immigrant who had started working as a carpenter there two weeks ago. She fell to her knees, screaming, when she learned he was among the dead.
Here’s what else to know:
- Immigrant community: Mr. Mamdani said the people killed and injured in the collapse included immigrants from Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Trinidad and elsewhere.
- Evacuations and street closures: Flatbush Avenue was closed from Clarendon Road to Bedford Avenue. Officials asked people to avoid the area. Vacate orders are in place on three nearby buildings: 1323, 1325, and 1327 Flatbush Avenues. Residents of other buildings who were temporarily displaced were allowed to return home, the mayor said.
- The building: The collapsed apartment building had been home to a number of businesses over the decades, including a medical clothes store and a tax-services office, according to city records. Read more ›
- Nearby site: A one-story building used to occupy the construction site next to the collapse. In March, the Department of Buildings ordered the property owner to halt demolition work after it found that there was inadequate protection for nearby properties. The order was fully lifted in August after the department found that the project team had corrected the violations.
Wesley Parnell
Speaking at an aide center near the collapse, the city’s public advocate, Jumaane Williams, said that he was concerned by early information that seemed to indicate that the construction next door contributed to the building’s collapse. “I’m angry at the things that I’m hearing about why this might have happened,” Williams said, after visiting aid workers and displaced residents. “I’m trying my best not to speak out of turn until we get information, but learning that this building fell the way it fell — not straight down, on an angle — might indicate that it wasn’t supported the way it was supposed to.” He called for an analysis to see if construction projects in lower income neighborhoods in Brooklyn received the same scrutiny as projects in Manhattan.
Nate Schweber
As darkness fell on the scene, a yellow backhoe with an oversize jaw excavated loads of debris into an oversize red dumpster. It was one of four red dumpsters overflowing with splintered wood, twisted metal, and torn scraps of clothing. Uniformed firefighters stood beside ladder trucks in the glare of NYPD spotlights. Workers set up tall tents in expectation of more cold, soaking rain.
图表：Credit... Angelina Katsanis for The New York Times
The New York Times
Vacate orders were in place on Thursday at buildings adjacent to site of the collapsed Brooklyn apartment building. Residents of other buildings who were temporarily displaced were allowed to return home, according to Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
图表：Credit... Dave Sanders for The New York Times
图表：Credit... Bing Guan for The New York Times
Maria Cramer
Rescue workers have finished scouring the scene of the collapse and have determined there are no more victims, according to officials. The site has now been turned over to the New York Police Department and the city’s Department of Buildings.
图表：Credit... Dave Sanders for The New York Times
Caitlyn Freeman
Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York called the collapse “absolutely, absolutely” heartbreaking on Thursday morning at a news media event on a small business initiative in Harlem. She said her office remained in contact with the city and that the state was ready to provide resources if needed. Ms. Hochul also sang praises of the Fire Department and its quick response.
“New Yorkers are stunned by what they’re seeing, but the investigators are already at work,” she said. “And New Yorkers deserve to know how and why this happened, and they’ll get to the bottom of it.”
Troy Closson
It’s still raining hard in Flatbush, but the rescue operation continues slowly at the site of the building collapse. A large group of emergency workers has been huddled up under a Fire Department tent, and some have retreated to their vehicles.
图表：Credit... Bing Guan for The New York Times
Santul Nerkar
What do search and rescue efforts look like after a building collapses?
Nearly 24 hours after a three-story apartment building collapsed in Brooklyn, rescue workers remain locked in a fight to identify and rescue any survivors trapped in the rubble.
The extensive search and rescue operations have involved canine units, helicopters and excavation machinery. So far, eight people have been confirmed dead and over a dozen are injured. Fire officials have said the search efforts are likely to continue for days.
It is not yet clear why the building, in the Flatbush neighborhood, collapsed. But the Fire Department’s search and rescue mission is following a standard playbook, one that dates back to World War II. It has been deployed countless times after similar disasters around the world, including the 2010 earthquake in Haiti and a condo collapse in 2021 in Surfside, Fla., that killed nearly 100 people.
Here’s how these search and rescue operations work.
What happens first?
After determining the basics of the collapsed building — including whether it is residential or commercial — rescuers look for any people who may be trapped on the surface of the wreckage, said Dave Downey, a retired fire chief from Miami-Dade County in Florida who has responded to many disasters involving collapsed buildings, including the Sept. 11 terror attacks and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
After that, Mr. Downey said, rescuers try to determine the manner in which the building collapsed, which informs their further search efforts.
If the building is still partially standing and there is open space between the floors, there could be more survivable space for any people trapped inside. Rescuers would then start looking inside these so-called void spaces, “the areas where there’s the greatest chance for survival,” Mr. Downey said.
Search efforts are of course more difficult when a building falls apart in a way that leaves little open space, as happened with the Surfside condo, which collapsed like a pancake, floor by floor, according to Mr. Downey.
What other factors must rescuers account for?
Rescuers need to also consider external factors like the weather. In the case of the Flatbush collapse, rainy conditions on Thursday afternoon may complicate the rescue efforts.
“You want to control any of the utilities, whether it’s gas, whether it’s water, whether it’s power,” Mr. Downey said. “You certainly don’t want water flooding any of these void spaces.”
Water mains were shut off temporarily after the collapse, but by noon on Thursday water service in the area had been restored, according to the city’s Department of Environmental Protection.
Rescuers may also seek to stabilize whatever parts of the building remain standing. That could mean using wood to shore up parts of the structure, allowing workers to access the rubble where more survivors could be trapped.
What technology is used?
When looking for survivors, rescuers tend to use specialized equipment like drones, listening devices and search cameras.
In Brooklyn, the Police Department has deployed drones to capture the scene while members of its aviation unit search from the sky, a police spokeswoman said on Thursday. Officers from the department’s Emergency Service Unit were also searching the area with dogs from the K-9 team.
Heavy equipment like grapplers were also being used on Thursday to remove rubble, said Lillian Bonsignore, the fire commissioner.
When does an operation turn to recovery?
Ms. Bonsignore said on Thursday afternoon that the operation was still focused on rescuing survivors. But at a certain point, officials will have to make the difficult choice to shift the operation to recovery, Mr. Downey said.
“When the decision is made that we no longer have persons that have survived, we transition to recovery,” Mr. Downey said.
Such a determination can take days and depends on a complex set of factors. One of the last to be considered is the amount of time that has elapsed since the collapse, Mr. Downey said. More important is the safety of the rescuers, which has to be weighed against the chances that anyone is still alive.
Still, a transition to recovery does not preclude the possibility that survivors will be found. When he was in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, Mr. Downey said, his team found a 2-year-old child alive in the rubble of a building eight days after it collapsed.
“We promise, with everything we have, we will not stop working until everyone is rescued or recovered,” Ms. Bonsignore said.
Chelsia Rose Marcius, Caitlyn Freeman and Hurubie Meko contributed reporting.
Wesley Parnell
The consul general of Ecuador, Gicela Andrade, has been visiting with city officials at a staging area near the scene. Andrade said that at least two Ecuadorians have been identified as victims. The remains of one, Jose Luis Caguana Cosquillo, will be sent to Ecuador to be buried, she said. Andrade accompanied Leanor Yupa, the mother of a second Ecuadorian victim, Gabriel Ariolfo Siguencia, to meet with detectives this afternoon.“When we heard the sad news we immediately got to ground zero where this tragedy occured and we’ve been in contact with the mother of one of these victims who has been missing since yesterday,” Andrade said in Spanish. “The authorities have just confirmed the death of our compatriot, and his mother was in that moment learning of the death of her son.”
图表：Credit... Angelina Katsanis for The New York Times
Emma Fitzsimmons
Monzurat Oni, the chairwoman of Brooklyn’s Community Board 17, where the collapse took place, said the developer of the construction site did not come to a board meeting this year to answer the public’s questions about the project. Under ballot measures passed last year that sped up the process for housing projects, the community board has less input, she said, even as the neighborhood is seeing a surge in new developments.
“I’m not against new construction,” Oni said. “I know New York needs to grow. We want new construction to be responsive to the existing community.”
Andrea Barnes
Half a dozen employees of the Department of Buildings were seen exiting a building on East 25th Street in Brooklyn that backs into the site of the collapse.
Julie Menin, the City Council speaker, began her comments at a council meeting on Thursday with a moment of silence for the victims of the building collapse.
“Today, my colleagues and I joined New Yorkers across the five boroughs in mourning the eight lives that were lost in the tragic collapse of a building in Flatbush,” she said, adding, “We’re incredibly grateful for the approximately 250 first responders who raced to the scene and who have been working tirelessly throughout the night on this heroic rescue efforts.”
She added that she was praying for the recovery of those injured.
Nate Schweber
As uniformed firefighters entered closed storefronts beside the collapsed building, representatives from the mayor’s office visited nearby businesses that remained open. With the streets blocked with emergency vehicles, the city’s representatives offered to help with any problems getting packages delivered or trash removed.
图表：Credit... Bing Guan for The New York Times
Wesley Parnell
First responders, investigators and city officials have a hard job in the wake of a building collapse: finding missing people, securing the area and notifying family members. A Y.M.C.A. on Flatbush Avenue has become a de facto staging area for families looking for information regarding loved ones. Throughout Thursday, teary people have entered the recreation center searching for information. A representative from Ecuador’s government visited the site earlier, accompanying the family of Gabriel Siguencia as they sought to confirm their son’s death. Aid groups and local restuarants, including the nearby Chick-fil-A, are dropping off supplies.
Caitlyn Freeman
A spokesperson for the American Red Cross said 14 adults and five children across seven households had registered with the organization for emergency assistance, which includes temporary lodging.
Matthew Haag
On Thursday, Ethan Clark and his roommate, DeAndre Finley, left their third-floor apartment on Flatbush Avenue three buildings down from the collapse, holding umbrellas over their heads and carrying several bags of clothes. They were traveling to Harlem to stay with some friends. “If it becomes an extended thing, I don’t know what we’ll do,” Finley said.
Andy Newman and Ashley Southall
Here’s what we know about the people killed in the collapse.
The eight people killed when a building in Brooklyn collapsed into a construction site on Wednesday were a cross-section of the bustling, fast-growing Flatbush neighborhood.
They included elementary-school-age cousins, construction workers from Ecuador and Guatemala, and a DoorDash deliveryman and an Amazon worker from Guinea in West Africa, according to an internal police report and family and friends of the victims.
Six died at the building at 1321 Flatbush Avenue and the construction site next door, where workers had been excavating when the building crashed down around 4 p.m. on Wednesday. Two others were pulled from the wreckage alive but died at hospitals, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at a news conference on Thursday.
By midafternoon Thursday, firefighters had halted rescue operations after determining there were no more victims in the rubble.
“This has been a devastating evening and morning for our city,” the mayor said earlier.
Another 18 people, including some firefighters, had been injured, Mr. Mamdani said. Officials have not determined what caused the collapse.
Here’s what we know about the victims:
- Nicole Daniela Salvala Rodriguez, age 9
- Kevin Santiago Reyes Gonzalez, 10
- Juan Daniel Salvada Guzman, 31
Edgar Santiago Sapón Gutierrez, 26
Edgar Santiago Sapón Gutierrez, a 26-year-old construction worker, was working at the site when the building collapsed.
Relatives spent the entire night looking for him, said Marisela Vasquez, 35, whose niece is married to Mr. Gutierrez.
“We went to the morgue and didn’t find him,” Ms. Vasquez said in Spanish. They returned to the scene of the collapsed building at about 5 or 6 a.m. and saw emergency workers pulling bodies out of the rubble.
“Unfortunately, they told us that he had died,” she said.
Mr. Gutierrez migrated from Guatemala three years ago, Eliseo Vásquez Talé, his uncle, said. He has a 6-year-old son, and his wife had arrived at the scene Wednesday evening after hearing of the collapse, hoping to find him.
“We came to this country to find a better life,” said Mr. Vásquez Talé. “Unfortunately our government is corrupt.”
On Thursday morning, they returned to the morgue, trying to see if they could identify his body. Nobody wants to believe he is dead, Ms. Vasquez said.
“We want to make sure it’s him,” she said.
Mamadou Bhoye Barry, 23
Mamadou Bhoye Barry, 23, a food delivery worker from Guinea, was pulled from the rubble early Thursday and pronounced dead at the scene.
He had been getting ready to work a night shift when the building collapsed, relatives said.
Mamadou Bhoye N’Diaye, 31
The body of Mamadou Bhoye N’Diaye, 31, Mr. Barry’s relative and an Amazon worker, was pulled from the rubble about an hour before Mr. Barry’s. But he remained unidentified for much of the day, frustrating his family’s search for answers.
On Thursday morning, Mr. N’Diaye’s brother, Habib N’Diaye, 32, sat slumped on the pavement outside a deli near the building waiting for updates with their cousin, Abubakar Diallo, 47.
Mr. Diallo expressed frustration at the lack of information from the authorities. He said they did not know what to tell family waiting for news in Guinea, a West African country racked by political instability and poverty.
“That missing room is his room,” Diallo said, referring to Habib N’Diaye as he pointed to a mound of rubble near the back of the building. “What is he going to tell his mother back home?”
José Luis Caguana, 26
José Luis Caguana, 26, a construction worker at the site of the collapse, had recently found work after a period of unemployment.
While he was looking for work in September, he would pick up his 4-year-old son at his pre-K in Bushwick, Brooklyn, Alexandra Simonian, the son’s teacher, said.
“When the dad would drop him off, he didn’t want to leave the dad, ever,” Ms. Simonian said. “They were very attached, a very sweet kind of family.”
Mr. Caguana, an immigrant from Ecuador who came to New York at least four years ago, was supporting a growing family: His wife is expecting a child this month, Ms. Simonian said.
On Thursday, Ms. Simonian said, Mr. Caguana’s wife, Nataly, and son came early to school.
“She was asking if it’s OK if he doesn’t come to school this week, because of the dad passing away,” Ms. Simonian said. “She was crying, and we were all hugging her.”
Mr. Caguana was also an avid soccer player. An official from his soccer club in New York, Club Deportivo La Bahía, posted on Facebook, “I will always remember you as a unique player, with that special magic in your feet.”
Gabriel Siguencia, 22
Gabriel Siguencia also came to New York from Ecuador in search of work, arriving in March 2025, his family said.
“He came here looking for a better life, a means to live, like so many migrants do,” Javier Ortega, a family friend, said in Spanish.
About two weeks ago, Mr. Siguencia started a new job: He was a carpenter at the construction site on Flatbush Avenue, his mother, Leanor Yupa, said.
Ms. Yupa arrived at the site of the building collapse at 8 p.m. Wednesday night in search of news about her son. She and her husband, draped in a blanket, waited all night on the sidewalk, watching emergency workers haul debris out of the site.
On Thursday afternoon, Ms. Yupa and family members sheltered from the pouring rain beneath an overhang. When she finally heard her son had died, Ms. Yupa dropped to her knees and screamed.
Kaja Andric, Miles G. Cohen, Maria Cramer, Ana Ley, Chelsia Rose Marcius, Wesley Parnell and Rachel Sherman contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research.
Todd Heisler and Christopher Maag
A pregnant woman was among the people rescued from the rubble.
An hour and a half after a building collapsed into a construction site in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn on Wednesday, a man walked through a crowd of onlookers and arrived at a strip of yellow police tape. He tried to push his way into the scene, but emergency workers blocked his path. It was unsafe to enter, they said.
The man, who did not give his name, paused. His wife was trapped inside, he said. And she was six months pregnant.
He walked across Flatbush Avenue, where he stood on the sidewalk surrounded by police officers, journalists and Jumaane Williams, the city’s public advocate. After nearly an hour of waiting, a journalist relayed the news at 6:30 p.m.: The man’s wife had been found, alive.
The man broke down crying and was embraced by Mr. Williams.
“She is still alive,” the man said in an impromptu news conference near the scene. “I am very happy.”
More than a dozen firefighters worked to lift the woman, who was strapped to an orange stretcher, out of the pit. She was carried to the open doors of an ambulance. Her husband stood by her stretcher for a few minutes before she was loaded into the back. The man climbed into the cab of the ambulance, which took them to a hospital.
The woman is in stable condition, said Farah Louis, the councilwoman who represents the neighborhood. The rescued woman is from Guinea, and she lived in the building with other residents who were immigrants, including from West Africa, Ms. Louis said.
“These folks are our neighbors,” Ms. Louis said. “They’re our friends. That’s why the community is so heartbroken.”
The collapse has killed at least eight people and injured at least 17. In addition to the pregnant woman, other people were removed from the rubble in stretchers, including a small child.
Maria Cramer
A 26-year-old construction worker, Edgar Santiago Sapón Gutierrez, has been identified as a victim of the collapse.
Relatives had spent the entire night looking for him, said Marisela Vasquez, 35, whose niece is married to Gutierrez. “We went to the morgue and didn’t find him,” Vasquez said. They returned to the collapse site early in the morning and saw emergency workers pulling bodies out of the rubble. “Unfortunately, they told us that he had died,” she said. Gutierrez has a 6-year-old son.
By noon, officials had confirmed that Gutiérrez was among those killed, according to an internal police report.
Mihir Zaveri
The Buildings Department said that the license of the special inspector overseeing foundation work at the construction site adjacent to the collapsed building was active, and that city records that indicated that the license had expired was based on information on the old portal. It remains unclear if the inspector had been on site recently.
Troy Closson
In a sign of how the heavy rain is hindering the rescue efforts, two police drones that were flying an hour ago have been pulled down. But many emergency workers remain active at the scene.
图表：Credit... Bing Guan for The New York Times
Wesley Parnell
Rain at the site has turned into a downpour. Streets adjacent to the collapse site are beginning to pool with shin-high water. Thunder is booming. This will make the rescue effort that much more complex.
Stefanos Chen
A complaint filed with the Department of Buildings on Wednesday night, after the building collapse, raised concerns about the excavation work at the adjacent development site, at 2625 Bedford Avenue. The anonymous complainant said the “subcontractor may have excavated too much of the area along the neighboring foundation” on a site with sandy soil and high groundwater.
Complaints are sometimes filed with the city after a major building failure, but it is unclear who submitted the report. The Buildings Department said it was investigating the report, and noted that the complaint was filed “by a member of the public” at 9 p.m., five hours after the collapse.
Andrea Barnes
The site of the collapsed building in Flatbush, Brooklyn, was somber on Thursday as emergency workers removed debris and rubble. The wall of a neighboring building appeared to have come down in the collapse. A bedroom with a pink motif was visible on the second floor. On the first floor, clothes were hanging in a closet.
Troy Closson
Mamdani said that he was “incredibly troubled” by reports that construction continued at the site even though an inspection report showed there were cracks in the north facade of the collapsed building. He stressed that the city would conduct a full investigation of the situation and hold anyone responsible “fully accountable.”
Troy Closson
Mamdani said that the Department of Buildings had identified “five different entities associated with the construction site,” and that city officials would conduct sweeps of “a hundred other sites across the city” they were involved with to ensure the sites remained safe.
