A stone’s throw from the World Trade Center, the tremor and noise brought back dramatic memories. A four-level parking garage partially collapsed Tuesday afternoon in Lower Manhattan, New York, killing at least one worker working on site and injuring five others who were inside the structure.
At around 4 p.m. (10 p.m. French time), a few blocks from City Hall and the Brooklyn Bridge, for some as yet unknown reason, the concrete floors of a parking lot on Ann Street collapsed on top of each other, crushing the cars from top to bottom, down to the ground floor, in a deafening tumble of bodywork. From the street nothing could be seen, but people nearby described a frightening rumble. “We have no reason to believe this was anything other than a structural collapse,” New York City Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell told reporters.
One person was pronounced dead at the scene, four others were taken to area hospitals with injuries and a sixth injured person refused medical treatment, said John Esposito, the fire department’s chief of operations. New York fire. He described the six people as workmen who were in the parking lot when it collapsed. “It was an extremely dangerous situation for our firefighters,” he said during a press briefing late afternoon, adding that firefighters had been ordered out of the structure “on building continued to collapse.
A drone flies over the structure
The site was then crawled with robots to ensure that all potential victims had been taken into account. City firefighters have for the first time flown a drone into the collapsed structure.
Several nearby buildings were evacuated, including a hotel and the campus of the private Pace University, whose students and staff use the parking lot. “This building is completely unstable”, justified the mayor of New York, Eric Adams. Witnesses in nearby buildings said they felt the buildings sway.
New York City Department of Buildings online records show the building, which housed a parking lot for nearly 100 years, was cited for 45 planning violations, including 25 since 2003. Many were elevator-related but a file notes in 2003 that “ceiling slab cracks exist” as well as “defective concrete with rear cracks exposed”. Records show an $800 fine was paid to the city, but not that the owner – a parking lot company that did not respond to media inquiries – initiated work to fix it. It is not known at this time which site the deceased worker and his injured colleagues were carrying out. There were no open violations or active complaints about the building prior to its collapse, Adams said.
VIDEO. United States: a parking lot collapses in New York, at least one dead and 5 injured
2023-04-19 12:08:00
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