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One person was killed and five were injured when a parking garage partially collapsed Tuesday in lower Manhattan’s financial district, Mayor Eric Adams said.
The second floor of the garage collapsed onto the first, CBS News reported, citing New York City emergency officials.
Authorities said they believed everyone who was in the building had been accounted for. No foul play was suspected.
The collapse happened in the late afternoon at a parking structure on Ann Street, a few blocks from city hall and the Brooklyn Bridge, less than a kilometre from the New York Stock Exchange. Video footage cited by CBS News showed a rescue operation underway and multiple cars stacked on top of one another amid crumpled concrete.
One person was pronounced dead on the scene, four more were taken to area hospitals for injuries and a sixth individual who was hurt declined medical treatment, said John Esposito, chief of fire operations for the New York City Fire Department.
He described all six as workers who were in the parking structure when it collapsed.
“This was an extremely dangerous situation for our firefighters,” he told a late-afternoon news briefing.
Firefighters responding to the collapse were pulled back from the immediate scene “out of concerns about the structural stability of the building,” the New York City Fire Department said in a statement.
‘Completely unstable’
Pace University, which is nearby the building and whose students, faculty and staff use the parking structure, was evacuated as a precaution, authorities said.
“This building is completely unstable,” Adams told reporters.
Eyewitnesses said the collapse was swift and without warning.
“It all happened so fast,” said Thai Nguyen, 35, who lives in Chinatown and is a manager of the nearby Kollective Klub. “Our store is two buildings from the parking garage, and we also have a hotel next to us. People ran inside asking if they could take refuge inside our store.”
“It felt like an earthquake,” Liam Gaeta, a Pace University student, told an ABC News affiliate. He said he heard “a large noise and a big rumbling, and then we all got evacuated.”
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