Two Dead, Seventeen Hurt as a Brooklyn Apartment Building Falls Into an Excavation Pit

A Brooklyn apartment building on a busy shopping street fell into an open construction pit next door on Wednesday afternoon, and the neighborhood heard it come down. The dead and injured were counted through the night, and the city says the totals may still move. What the records show about the site next door is the other half of the story.

Two Dead and Seventeen Hurt as a Brooklyn Apartment Building Falls Into a Pit

Brooklyn, New York — Crews worked into the night at Flatbush and Bedford Avenues, where an apartment building had fallen into a construction pit beside it. Firefighters dug by hand with axes and pickaxes and used flashlights after dark. Officials said the search would likely continue for days.

Four O'Clock on Flatbush Avenue

The three-story mixed-use building at 1321 Flatbush Avenue, at the corner of Flatbush and Bedford Avenues, partially collapsed just after 4 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday 11 November 2026 and fell into an open construction excavation next door at 2625 Bedford Avenue. The first 911 call came in at 4:01 p.m., the FDNY said. The building held four residential units with a commercial space on the ground floor, according to city records. A 1980 certificate of occupancy identifies commercial space on the first floor and two residential units each on the second and third floors, according to records reviewed by the trade publication Engineering News-Record. The building was built in 1930, according to city data. It stood on a busy commercial stretch of Flatbush Avenue running through the Little Haiti section of Flatbush. Flatbush Avenue was closed from Clarendon Road to Bedford Avenue, and the NYPD asked the public to avoid the area.

The Whole Building Started Shaking

Firefighters arrived within a minute of the collapse, according to officials. Melissa Orna, 53, said she heard the building come down as she was dropping her daughter at a hair salon nearby. "Everything went down, and everybody was screaming," she said. "The whole building started shaking, and then it just fell." The collapse sheared off the exterior wall of the adjacent building at 1323 Flatbush Avenue, exposing apartments inside: a staircase, a bedroom and closets left open to the air. That building is still standing. Luis Olmedo said his brother, Miguel Tigsilema, had started a job at the construction site next to the collapsed building on Monday and was working on Wednesday afternoon when he saw the building's wall tumble down with a child. Tigsilema reached the boy and carried him to safety. Rescuers pulled survivors out one by one through the evening. A woman was pulled alive from the wreckage more than two hours after the collapse, as night fell. News 12 cameras captured firefighters pulling a pregnant woman from the ruins; her husband said through tears, "She is alive."

The Numbers Are Not Final

Two people were killed and 17 others were injured, city officials said at a nighttime news conference on Wednesday, and officials said the figures could still change. The numbers moved during the night. Earlier in the evening the FDNY had confirmed one death, and Reuters, in a dispatch filed Wednesday night, reported at least one person killed and at least 10 injured. Engineering News-Record's first version reported one dead and at least nine injured before it was updated. Four of the injured were in critical condition and one firefighter suffered minor injuries, FDNY Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore said. The FDNY did not release the ages of the two people killed, or say whether any of the children died. The department said it did not know how many people were inside the building when it collapsed, and could not yet say whether everyone had been accounted for. Even the size of the response is reported two ways: about 250 fire and EMS personnel responded, according to officials, while an earlier mayoral statement said more than 150 firefighters had been sent.

Seven Children and a Quiet Holiday

Seven of the injured were children, Bonsignore said. The collapse came on Veterans Day, when schools and some businesses were closed and more people may have been home than on a typical Wednesday, the New York Times reported. Lisa Brown, a 40-year resident of Flatbush, watched at Flatbush and Foster Avenues. "This is very sad. I walk this way a lot. Sometimes I walk it with my grandchildren. They said seven kids had been injured," she said. Regine Decossard, 24, learned by text message that her grandmother, who lives nearby, was safe. "Thank God. She's all good, thank God," she said. Council Member Farah N. Louis, who represents Flatbush, said the images from the site were "heartbreaking" and that her team was "actively working to reach affected families to connect them with critical information and support during this frightening time."

The Pit That Was Already There

Construction workers were excavating the site next door when the building came down, according to Buildings Commissioner Ahmed Tigani. The site at 2625 Bedford Avenue was previously occupied by a one-story building, which was demolished earlier this year. City records show excavation at the site began in September, and the work includes blasting rock, NBC New York reported. The cause of the collapse remained under investigation by the Department of Buildings and law enforcement as of late on Wednesday. No cause had been determined, and investigators had not established whether the excavation or the support-of-excavation work next door played any role. The Department of Buildings said its inspectors were at the scene assisting recovery operations and conducting structural stability inspections of nearby buildings.

Permits, Piles and Fourteen Feet Down

The Buildings Department issued earthwork and support-of-excavation permits for the development on 9 September 2026, ENR reported. Townhouse Builders is listed as contractor on both permits. The support-of-excavation filing allows excavation to 14 ft below grade. Jieming Wang, a professional engineer with LMW Engineering Group LLC of Linden, New Jersey, is listed as engineer on the support-of-excavation filing. Planned excavation-support methods include tangent or secant piles, shoring and bracing, and soldier piles with wood lagging. The project also required special inspection of excavation sheeting, shoring and bracing. NBC New York said it left phone and email messages with the architect, the property owner and the general contractor listed in city records. The investigation is continuing, and officials have not assigned fault.

A Stop-Work Order and a Ten-Thousand-Dollar Fine

News 12 reported that public Department of Buildings records show the department issued the adjacent construction site a violation in April for unlawfully continuing work while under a stop-work order, when the site was under demolition. ABC7 reported that one summons was issued in April, and that a stop-work order was allegedly violated but was later resolved. The New York Times, citing city records, reported that in March the department ordered the property owner to halt the demolition, and that on re-inspection inspectors found the entire structure had been levelled. The department issued a $10,000 fine for the violation. Eyewitness News found no building violations for the building that collapsed itself.

Three Stories Approved, Nine Stories Filed

The records do not agree on the size or the height of what was planned next door. City records reviewed by NBC New York show the excavation site was owned by an LLC seeking to build a 56,000 square-foot mixed-use building, including a grocery store on the ground floor and eight more stories of residential apartments. Records reviewed by Engineering News-Record describe the planned development as a nine-story-plus-cellar mixed-use building totalling 71,388 sq ft with 64 residential units; earlier public records described a smaller three-story development at the property. Officials said they had approved plans for a three-story building at the site, and that developers had submitted plans for a nine-story mixed-use building that had not yet been approved. Blueprints show a mixed-use building with retail space, medical services and residential apartments, according to ABC7.

What the City Cannot Yet Say

"We do not know how many people are missing," said John Esposito, chief of department for the Fire Department. Fire Department officials said firefighters would work with the New York Police Department on missing persons reports. "Our main concern is a secondary collapse," Esposito said, and he said work was under way to reduce the risk of further collapse. Crews used drones, dogs, helicopters, buckets and vacuum trucks to search the rubble, the New York Times reported. Bonsignore said the search would be a "prolonged operation" and that officials expected there to be more victims. "This is such a very fragile situation," she said. "This was a major technical response," she added. "Multiple people from the building and a construction site were trapped." Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at the briefing: "This has been an incredibly challenging and fast-moving situation, with precarious wreckage to navigate and dangerous voids beneath the surface." He called it "a devastating collapse." In a separate statement, the mayor said: "As emergency operations continue, please join me in holding our neighbors and the members of this community in our hearts."

Eight Households, One YMCA and a Long Week

At least eight households were displaced, according to city officials; some lived at 1321 Flatbush Avenue and others at 1323 Flatbush Avenue. New York City Emergency Management and the American Red Cross opened a reception center for affected and displaced residents at the Flatbush YMCA, 1401 Flatbush Avenue, offering temporary lodging, mental health services and other support. A Red Cross spokesperson said the center closed as of 10:50 p.m.; while it was open, 11 adults and two children across six households registered for emergency assistance. A man who declined to be named said his third-floor apartment at 1321 Flatbush Avenue, where he lived for five years, was destroyed and he had "lost everything." Near the site, a man waited for word of his 26-year-old nephew, a construction worker still missing, after searching hospitals and a morgue with the young man's wife. If you cannot reach someone you believe was caught in this collapse, call 311; from outside the city, call 212-639-9675. Eight households lost their homes on a Wednesday afternoon, and the city's own records about the site next door are where the answers will have to come from.

By Jessica Ali, Staff Writer

This article was produced with AI-assisted research and editorial support. Sources: Reuters, ABC News, ABC7 Eyewitness News, The New York Times, NBC New York, News 12 Brooklyn, and Engineering News-Record. Photographs: Ryan Murphy/AP; ABC News; NYC Department of Buildings via Engineering News-Record. Cover: Global 1 News editorial image.