NEW YORK: Firefighters early Thursday removed the bodies of three more people who died after a three-story building in Brooklyn collapsed at the edge of a construction site, bringing the death toll to five, 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.
“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.”
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…
