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(CNN) One person was killed and five injured when a parking lot collapsed in lower Manhattan Tuesday afternoon, said the New York Fire Department’s chief of operations.
The parking lot was a four-story building that “was pancaked all the way to the basement floor,” said Kazimir Bilenczyk, acting commissioner of the New York City Department of Buildings.
Officials said they believed it was a structural collapse.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams said at a press conference that the building was “totally unstable” and that it had used robotic dogs and drones to search for people in the building. , said everyone seemed to be to blame.
“We’re trying to see if we can get closer to make sure no one is in these cars,” Esposito said.
Zach Powers, a freshman at Pace University, told CNN he heard a loud bang followed by a violent rumbling while he was in his dorm on Tuesday afternoon.
“It lasted 10 seconds and it was surreal,” he said. “Then I saw smoke flying toward the window, so as I approached the window, I saw the car fall into a hole in the middle of the garage.”
“It looked like the floor was dented,” said Zach Powers.
Fearing the worst, he put on his shoes and ran out of the dormitory as fast as he could.
“I got out of the building before the smoke cleared,” he said.
After he left the dormitory, Powers said he saw the two men lying across from where the collapse had occurred. He said firefighters are taking care of them.
Video taken by Powers from his dormitory on the seventh floor shows a collapsed garage with several damaged vehicles.
Four of the injured have been taken to hospital and are in stable condition, Esposito said. One did not want treatment.
At least one worker in the building was trapped on the ground floor of the upper car park and was unable to evacuate to the lower floors despite being conscious and alert. Esposito said FDNY officials were able to rescue him by taking him from the roof to a nearby building and lowering him to safety.
Firefighters initially began searching the building on foot, but the building continued to collapse and due to the instability of the building, the decision was made to remove all rescue workers from the scene, Esposito said. He called it “very dangerous work.”
Buildings department engineers continue to check adjacent buildings, review drone footage and building records, and investigate possible reasons for the collapse, Vilenchik said.
Adams said there were no open violations or active complaints about the building prior to its collapse.
CNN’s Sharif Padgett contributed to this report.
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