Eight killed, including two children, in New York building collapse

New York authorities said Thursday that eight people, including two children, were killed after a residential building collapsed a day earlier, prompting a frantic overnight search by firefighters to pull people from the rubble.

The three-storey property in Brooklyn fell Wednesday afternoon into a neighbouring excavation site where construction workers had been preparing foundations for a planned development.

"This has been a devastating morning and evening for our city," said New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who announced the latest death toll and said over a dozen more were injured.

One of those killed was Ecuadoran national Gabriel Siguencia, 22, whose stepsister said in a tearful interview that he was working overtime at the construction site when the building collapsed.

"We went from hospital to hospital, trying to find him, showing pictures, but nobody knew anything until they told us he passed," Kayla Chimborazo, 20, told AFP and other journalists.

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"He just came here to do work to be able to provide for his family back in Ecuador. He's just the sweetest person," she added, saying he had a wife and son.

The New York Times reported that the youngest victim was aged nine, and that nationalities included Ecuador, Guatemala and Guinea.

New York's fire department declared Thursday afternoon there were no further victims at the site after emergency workers spent hours searching with drones and canine units.

Officials said the cause of the collapse was not immediately clear.

'Devastating'

The building, a three-storey structure dating from 1930 with four apartments and a commercial space on the ground floor, collapsed on to the nearby excavation site.

An adjacent building was left ripped open with one of its walls torn away, exposing a staircase, bedroom and a wardrobe full of clothing.

Shop worker James Williams, 60, told AFP he witnessed the building collapse after hearing loud banging noises throughout the morning.

"I smelled the smoke from the fumes, and I was watching bricks fall. But to see, like two minutes later, to see the building collapse and fall, it was just devastating," he said.

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"There were people trying to get out ... I saw somebody on the side of the staircase, and I'll be honest with you, I didn't even really want to think about that."

Another witness, 14-year-old Kenneilia Reid, told AFP: "When I was walking by, I started seeing dust all of a sudden, and I was like, what is going on? When I turned my back, I saw the whole building collapse."

'Fully accountable'

According to documents from the city's building department reviewed by AFP, the construction site had been issued a stop-work order in April due to potentially dangerous demolition conditions.

However, work continued, resulting in a $10,000 fine for the company involved. No link has yet been established between these violations and the building's collapse.

Mamdani said five main entities were involved at the site and that authorities had started "sweeping" 100 other construction sites they are associated with around the city.

The mayor promised a thorough investigation and to hold anyone responsible "fully accountable".

Some people in Flatbush, a mostly Black neighbourhood where the building collapsed, voiced their anger at gentrification and development after the incident.

"It's just all about making money. They didn't care about the danger," businessman Winston Bowen, 54, told AFP on a pavement opposite the collapsed building.