New York Daily News
(TNS)
NEW YORK — A Bronx intersection was turned into a site of destruction Monday afternoon when a seven-story building partially collapsed, prompting firefighters to dig through a pile of rubble hours later in search of victims who may be trapped, according to officials.
First responders raced to the scene of the destruction on Billingsley Terrace near Phelan Place in Morris Heights just before 3:40 p.m., police said.
“In front of the building where the building collapses there’s a large debris pile,” Fire Department of New York Chief of Department John Hodgens said at an evening news conference. “And we don’t know if anybody’s trapped under there, hopefully not.”
The emergency workers are tunneling into the rubble as safely as they can, he added.
“Firefighters right now are in a dangerous position,” Hodgens said. “We don’t know what caused this corner of the building to come down and we don’t know if anymore of it is going to come down.”
A man who works in a bodega across the street watched as two men worked on the building — which was under construction at the time, according to Department of Buildings officials — just before the collapse.
“Before it came down, the scaffolding started creaking, then the whole thing started coming apart,” Ahmed Bendary, 23, told the New York Daily News. “People were screaming.”
One of the men working on the building quickly left as warning noises started, but the other kept on drilling.
“When it started coming down, he jumped immediately and ran across the street,” Bendary recounted. “It just missed him. He was almost killed.”
The bodega employee stepped outside and watched as a line of bedrooms fell to the street below.
“Big rocks started coming down from the building,” he said. “Then it went down floor by floor in a second.”
Numerous people were inside when the northeast corner of the 47-unit building built in 1927 crumbled, officials said.
The rest of the building was evacuated after the collapse, which left a whole row of units with their walls destroyed, exposing interiors with careening floors and ceilings.
A police spokesperson described the scene as “chaotic” as first responders continued to search debris for any trapped people.
“There is no timetable,” Hodgens said of the search. “We will search the whole debris until every piece is picked up and we can see that whether there’s anybody there or not.”
Bendary described the collapse as something out of “an action movie.”
“It was like something that happened at Palestine,” he added.
No one was immediately found to be injured or killed. But the city launched the full force of its first responders at the building, including members of the Fire Department, a K-9 team, a surveying drone, tactical units and EMTs and paramedics trained specifically to treat someone injured in a building collapse.
In March 2021, inspectors found the building had unsafe facade conditions, deteriorating mortar and cracked bricks, Department of Buildings Commissioner James Oddo said at the news conference.
There are seven open violations, none of them structural, according to Oddo.
Blueprints for the ongoing construction appeared to focus on the very corner of the building that collapsed Monday, he said.
“Obviously, we’ll take a strong look at that,” he added. “Our engineers and our inspectors hope to be able to get into the building once given the green light by the FDNY to get in the building.”
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