May 20, 2005
Building Falls in Brooklyn
By THOMAS J. LUECK
A row house undergoing renovations in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, collapsed yesterday in a cascade of bricks, cinder blocks, mortar and scaffolding. At least two construction workers buried beneath the rubble were among the 11 people who were injured, one critically, the authorities said.
The collapse occurred about 1:15 p.m. at 103 Meserole Street on a residential block just east of Williamsburg's enclave of Hasidic Jews.
Firefighters, who were on the scene in less than five minutes, encountered a score of shaken, dust-covered workers who had escaped the wreckage, and who feared that others, buried under debris on the building's second floor, had been killed.
"I started calling their names, and no one answered," said Benitas Joseph, 36, one of the workers who escaped serious harm and immediately scrambled through the piles of debris in search of those who were trapped. "I was frightened," he said. "I thought everybody was dead."
Fire officials said two workers were found under debris on the second floor, one of them unconscious. They said the 11 injured workers were admitted to Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan and Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens.
None of them were identified.
The cause of the collapse remained under investigation, but the building had a history of poor maintenance and tension between the landlord and several former tenants, city officials said.
Originally a three-story row house, the building was vacant and undergoing extensive renovations that were to include a 1,000-square-foot addition, according to Department of Buildings officials. Its third floor had been removed, and workers at the site yesterday were using a tall scaffold that rested on the second floor.
David Allabard, a Hunter College student who lives opposite the building, said the collapse "sounded like a lot of jets flying to La Guardia."
"It was like a roar that gets bigger and bigger, then recedes," he said.
Late yesterday, the collapsed building, viewed from Mr. Allabard's roof, was a jumble of bricks, cinder blocks and metal poles. A wooden ladder lay amid the rubble, and a torn blue tarp that had been draped across the front of the building's second floor to replace its facade waved in the breeze.
Officials evacuated residents of two adjacent row houses as a precaution, but those buildings showed few outward signs of damage.
Susan Hinkson, the Brooklyn commissioner of the Department of Buildings, said the owner of 103 Meserole Street had obtained a permit for extensive renovations in March, and was intending to add an extension at the rear of the building and an additional floor. "We are now looking to see if they were working within the confines of that permit," she said.
A Buildings Department spokeswoman, Ilyse Fink, said a violation had been issued weeks ago to the building owner for failing to erect a fence around the Meserole Street work site. She said that the building had a history of other violations, but that they did not appear to relate to yesterday's collapse.
City records identified the building owner as a corporate entity, 103 Meserole Shitfas L.L.C. Calls to a telephone number for that entity, provided by the city, were not returned yesterday.
The records also identified the construction company in charge as Precision Construction of Brooklyn. A woman who answered the company's phone declined to comment.
It was unclear yesterday whether ownership of the building has changed since it was involved in a bitter landlord-tenant dispute in the late 1990's. A spokeswoman for the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development, Carol Abrams, said the tenants of the building's six apartments won a court ruling in 1998 that effectively turned over management to an outside administrator.
The court found that the landlord at the time, whom Ms. Abrams said she could not identify, had neglected the property so severely that there were "conditions that are dangerous to tenants' life, health and safety." A Brooklyn community development group, St. Nicholas Neighborhood Preservation Corporation, was then put in charge of the building. It collected rents and performed maintenance until 2003, when it determined that the building remained in such bad shape that tenants should be moved elsewhere.
The group helped the tenants find other apartments, and the building was entirely vacated in March 2004, Ms. Abrams said.
Henry Wilfred, 38, of Crown Heights, who was working in a rear courtyard when the collapse occurred, said he and others scrambled to the second floor to help their buried co-workers.
Mr. Wilfred said he was able to make out a leg protruding from a pile of bricks and cinder blocks, and then recognized a boot. It belonged to a friend, Eddie Bayless.
Tossing aside debris, Mr. Wilfred said, he found Mr. Bayless badly dazed, adding, "He said he was trying to stay strong until we saved him."
Michael Brick and Colin Moynihan contributed reporting for this article.
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