NEW YORK (AP) — Firefighters early Thursday removed the bodies of four more people who died after a three-story building in Brooklyn collapsed at the edge of a construction site, bringing the death toll to six, and they kept digging through the rubble to find others who may be trapped beneath the wreckage.
At least 17 people were hospitalized with injuries, including four in critical condition after the building came down Wednesday afternoon. The New York City Fire Department confirmed the additional deaths, and the other two deaths were announced Wednesday.
Scores of firefighters and police officers wielding pickaxes and power saws clambered over the rubble pile overnight, punching holes through the ruins to pull dust-covered people from beneath piles of twisted wood and brick.
Rescuers used dogs to sniff for survivors. Firefighters used orange buckets as they removed debris from the rubble piles trying to reach people who may be trapped.
“This has been an incredibly challenging and fast-moving situation, with precarious wreckage to navigate and dangerous voids beneath the surface,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at a news conference Wednesday. “This type of rescue is exactly what the FDNY trains for.”
Heavy rain was forecast for the city on Thursday afternoon. It wasn’t immediately known how that would affect search efforts.
The cause of the collapse was under investigation, but New York City’s buildings commissioner, Ahmed Tigani, noted that when the building fell, construction workers were excavating an empty lot next door for a new building.
Much of the rubble from the collapsed building — a mixed-use structure with apartments sitting atop ground-floor commercial space — wound up in a huge pile inside the construction pit. Another building that shared a wall with the collapsed structure remained standing, but its wall was shorn off, exposing the rooms inside, including a bedroom and closets filled with clothing.
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