Two killed and 19 injured as three-storey building collapses in Brooklyn

Two people have been killed and 19 others injured after a three-storey building collapsed in the Flatbush neighbourhood of Brooklyn, New York, trapping residents and construction workers beneath the rubble and triggering a rescue operation that officials said would last for days. The building fell into an open construction site next door, leaving a pile of debris where apartments and shops had stood hours earlier.

The collapse happened just after 4pm local time on Wednesday at 1321 Flatbush Avenue, when part of the mixed-use building, with apartments sitting above businesses, toppled into the neighbouring lot at 2625 Bedford Avenue, where a one-storey building had recently been torn down for a construction project. The New York City Fire Department said its crews were called to the scene for a partial collapse with people trapped inside.

Fire Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore confirmed the toll at a news conference, saying the department was treating 19 patients. "We have 19 patients. Sadly, we have two that are deceased, four that are critical, 12 that are stable, and we also have one firefighter with minor injuries," she said. Seven of the injured were children.

More than 250 firefighters and emergency medical workers were sent to the scene, and the scale of the response reflected how dangerous the site remained. Firefighters used power saws, heavy equipment, search dogs, overhead drones and their bare hands to clear the debris, working through the night as the pile shifted under them. Bonsignore warned that the operation would be a long one. "We do not know how many people are still in the collapse zone," she said. "And this will be a prolonged operation. Its cause is under investigation."

The first rescues came within hours. At around 6.30pm, firefighters pulled a dust-covered person, still alive and moving, out of a hole they had dug into the rubble pile and rushed the survivor to a waiting ambulance on a stretcher. Four more people were rescued from the debris within the next hour. A pregnant woman was among those pulled from the site.

For the families inside, the collapse unfolded in moments of terror. Anderson Velez, a resident of the building, was at work when his wife called him frantically from beneath the rubble, telling him she was trapped inside their apartment with their two children, aged seven and two, with debris on top of them. He was later told that his entire family had been pulled alive from the wreckage.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani visited the scene and held a news conference at about 8pm, urging people to avoid the area so rescue crews could work. He said first responders had arrived one minute after the first emergency call, because a fire crew returning from a nearby emergency was already close by and immediately began search-and-rescue operations. Flatbush Avenue was closed from Clarendon Road to Bedford Avenue.

Fire Department Chief of Department John Esposito said officials did not know how many people were missing overall, and that search and rescue operations would continue for several days. Department of Buildings inspectors were also on the scene, assisting with the recovery and carrying out structural stability inspections of nearby buildings, amid fears that the collapse could have weakened the structures around it.

The building had been perched at the edge of the lot where the neighbouring one-storey building had been demolished, and investigators will now have to establish whether the demolition and construction work next door played any part in the failure. The cause of the collapse has not yet been determined, and officials have not said whether any warning signs had been reported before Wednesday afternoon.

Flatbush, home to a predominantly Black and Afro-Caribbean community, has seen the disaster strike at the heart of a residential street, and the coming days will be dominated by the search for anyone still trapped and by questions about how a building that people were living and working in could come down without warning. For now, the firefighters on the pile are working on the assumption that there may still be survivors beneath the concrete, and the operation will not stop until the site has been fully searched.