One worker was dead and four required hospitalization 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 at 57 Ann St. 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.
“We believe that we have everybody accounted for,” Esposito said after department personnel searched the building with drones and a robotic dog. At one point the department pulled out its personnel because of concerns about the building’s stability
Esposito said one of the rescued survivors was trapped on an upper floor and had called out to responders. Some cars were crushed when slabs from upper floors fell on them, he said.
Classes at nearby Pace University were canceled and some of its residential buildings 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.
Contributing: The Associated Press
