One dead and five injured after parking garage collapses on top of cars
One person has died and five people have been injured after a parking garage collapsed in New York City.
Officials said the structure collapsed in lower Manhattan's Financial District, with bystander footage showing cars precariously hanging from a buckled upper deck on Tuesday, April 18.
Footage from the scene shows multiple cars atop the concave roof with a woman heard screaming "get out".
New York Fire Department confirmed that there were six workers in the building when it collapsed.
Four were taken to hospital in a stable condition, one refused treatment, and one person has died.
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In a press conference, New York Fire Chief of Operation John Esposito said they believed it was an "active parking lot" and were not "aware there was any construction ongoing".
Emergency responders at the scene after the parking garage partially collapsed in lower Manhattan (CBS New York)In a statement, he said: "As far as we can tell so far we have six patients.
"There were six workers in the building at the time of the collapse. Four of them have been transported to the hospital in stable condition, we have one patient that has died and we have one patient that has refused medical attention.
"This was an extremely dangerous operation for our firefighters. We responded to a call of a collapse in the building, we had firefighters inside the building conducting searches, the building was continuing to collapse, we made the decision to remove all our people from the building.
View of the garage in Manhattan from a nearby window (Citizen)
This photo shows the partial collapse at the garage in lower Manhattan's Financial District (AP)"Our robotics unit happened to be nearby, they were on scene very quickly. We deployed our robot dog into the building, they were able to give us video inside and then we were able to fly our drones inside to conduct an assessment and conduct searches.
"Although we continue to make sure that we have everyone accounted for, at this time we beleive we have the workers that were in danger in the building accounted for, all out of the building, and that structure is very unstable.
Fire crews and police are at the scene in lower Manhattan's Financial District (CBS New York)"We've had some of the slabs, a couple of floors of the concrete slab floors, collapse, crush some of the cars that were inside and this will be a prolonged operation."
New York City Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell added: "At this time we have no reason to believe this is anything other than a structural collapse, obviously this investigation will continue.
"Our preliminary response centre are making this area safe, that includes traffic control and evacuating the nearby Pace university building which was deemed unstable at that time.
"We will continue to work in collaboration with our partners in the fire department in this effort."
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Fire crews assessing the damage to the collapsed car park in lower Manhattan (CBS New York)The Fire Chief went on to say: "There was a worker that was trapped on the upper floors, he was conscious and alert, moving around, calling us - he just couldn't get down.
"We were able to put firefighters up there in the building and take him out across the roof to another building and bring him down."
He also said they have sent "people to the hospitals" to make sure everyone was "accounted for".
Liam Gaeta, a student at nearby Pace University said: "It felt like an earthquake."
He said he heard "a large noise and a big rumbling, and then we all got evacuated".
The New York City Mayor's office warned people to "avoid the area of Ann Street, between Nassau Street & William Street in lower Manhattan" due to "an emergency response to a structural collapse".
The car park is used by the New York City Sheriff's Office to park cars while working at the Manhattan office.
"We accounted for all our personnel", Sheriff Anthony Miranda told the New York Post, adding his office had four cars parked there.
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