New York Construction Report staff writer
New York City officials have expanded emergency safety inspections to more than 160 construction sites across the five boroughs and commissioned an independent engineering firm to investigate Wednesday’s deadly building collapse in Brooklyn, as City Council leaders called for immediately filling nearly 170 vacant positions at the Department of Buildings (DOB).
The expanded enforcement sweep and oversight push followed the collapse of an occupied three-story masonry building at 1321 Flatbush Ave. in the Flatbush neighborhood into an active construction excavation pit next door at 2625 Bedford Ave., killing eight people — including two children and two construction workers — and injuring 18 others.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced Friday that the city ordered inspections at more than 160 construction sites associated with six entities linked to the demolition and excavation project at 2625 Bedford Ave., significantly expanding Thursday’s initial sweep of roughly 100 sites across five entities, according to The Associated Press.
“I think it is always an outrage when eight New Yorkers lose their lives, when 18 New Yorkers are hospitalized, and when families are shattered as a result of all of this,” Mamdani said, adding that if investigators uncover “any evidence of criminality,” authorities “will follow through to the fullest extent of the law.”
Mamdani also confirmed the city is retaining an outside engineering consulting firm to produce an independent technical report on the structural failure, calling the step “standard practice for this kind of a tragic incident,” The Associated Press reported.
Meanwhile, the disaster drew scrutiny Friday to staffing levels at the DOB, which had 168 vacant positions out of 1,855 authorized jobs — a vacancy rate of roughly 9% — according to city comptroller data cited by The Associated Press.
“We must, and we will, ensure that every single one of those positions is immediately filled,” said New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin, a Democrat. “This is an unspeakable, horrendous tragedy, and we must meet this moment.”
Democratic City Council Member Farah Louis, who represents the Flatbush district, called for aggressive oversight, telling reporters: “Grief without accountability is not enough. Buildings do not simply collapse without systemic failures.”
New York City DOB Commissioner Ahmed Tigani said Friday that his agency is conducting “an exhaustive investigation” of the collapse, noting that while developers held an approved plan for a three-story building at 2625 Bedford Ave., a separate application for a proposed nine-story, 64-unit mixed-use development had not yet been approved when the adjacent building fell.
The New York City Fire Department (FDNY) concluded search-and-rescue operations at 3:37 p.m. Thursday after determining no additional victims remained beneath the rubble, turning the site over to the DOB and the New York City Police Department.
Six victims died at the scene and two died at nearby hospitals following Wednesday’s 4:01 p.m. collapse, Mamdani said. Of the 18 people injured, 14 were civilians — including seven children — and four were firefighters, with one victim remaining in critical condition.
A senior NYPD official released the names and ages of all eight deceased victims Thursday evening:
- Nicole Daniela Salvada Rodriguez, 9, of Brooklyn
- Kevin Santiago Reyes Gonzalez, 10, of Brooklyn
- Gabriel Siguencia, 22, of the Bronx
- Barry Mamadou, 23, of Brooklyn
- José Luis Caguana Cosquillo, 26, of Brooklyn
- Edgar Sapon, 26, of Manhattan
- Juan Daniel Salvada Guzman, 31, of Brooklyn
- Ndiaye Mamadou, 31, of Brooklyn
Police said Rodriguez, Guzman, Gonzalez, Ndiaye Mamadou and Barry Mamadou lived at 1321 Flatbush Ave., while Siguencia, Sapon and Cosquillo resided in the Bronx, Hell’s Kitchen and Bushwick, respectively. Mamdani confirmed that two of the fatalities were construction workers at the neighboring site and praised surviving workers who turned back to dig trapped victims from the debris alongside arriving firefighters.
At a Friday news conference, survivors and neighbors described feeling heavy vibrations and hearing loud thumping from the adjacent excavation prior to the collapse, according to The Associated Press. Ciahola Lawrence, who lived in the adjoining building at 1323 Flatbush Ave. whose shared exterior wall was sheared off, said the construction work produced noises so loud that “you would hear that thumping and movement in your soul.”
James Williams, who works at a deli across the street, told The Associated Press he heard loud banging from the construction site throughout the day Wednesday before seeing bricks fall from 1321 Flatbush Ave. “Two minutes later, the building collapsed,” Williams said.
More than 250 FDNY firefighters and EMS personnel worked overnight Wednesday and through Thursday using drones, K-9 units, buckets, vacuum trucks and hand tools to search unstable brick and timber voids. Firefighters pulled Fatoumata Bah, who was six months pregnant, alive from the rubble after roughly two and a half hours; her husband, Mamadou Mouctar Balde, told The Associated Press Friday that she and their unborn child were doing well, though two of their roommates, Ndiaye Mamadou and Barry Mamadou, perished.
City officials maintained vacate orders for the adjoining buildings at 1323, 1325 and 1327 Flatbush Ave. while structural stability inspections continued, though evacuated residents further south on Flatbush Avenue were allowed to return home.
Following the collapse, the DOB issued a full stop-work order at 2625 Bedford Ave. An initial agency notice attributed the collapse to “unsafe construction operations,” though the DOB quickly removed that wording and told Crain’s New York Business the description had been entered prematurely and was inaccurate, revising the record to cite a full stop-work order because of the collapse while the cause remains under investigation.
City earthwork and support-of-excavation permits issued Sept. 9 list Brooklyn-based Townhouse Builders Inc. — which also operates under the name Promont — as the contractor on the neighboring project, according to municipal permit filings reviewed by Engineering News-Record (ENR) and The Associated Press.
Excavation was permitted to extend 14 feet below grade, and city records reviewed by The Associated Press show contractor Mordechai “Marty” Waisbrod notified the city on Sept. 9 that excavation would begin the following day and include rock blasting.
Court records reviewed by CBS News show Townhouse Builders Inc. has been named as a defendant in at least 67 civil lawsuits since 2012, with 18 cases still active. More than half — 37 lawsuits — were filed by workers alleging job-site injuries, while 10 involve property-damage claims, including several brought by neighboring property owners alleging that adjacent digging or pile-driving damaged their buildings, CBS News reported.
In one personal injury lawsuit naming Townhouse Builders and a property owner, a jury awarded $4.8 million to a worker who fell 15 to 20 feet after being struck by an air-conditioning duct — an award Townhouse Builders contested, arguing the worker’s subcontractor employer was responsible and the damages were excessive, according to CBS News.
In a separate pending lawsuit filed in 2016 and updated in 2020, the owner of a six-story Brooklyn hotel project is seeking at least $1.1 million, alleging excavation, pile-driving and steel-beam installation by Townhouse Builders caused “a breached wall, substantial shifting, settlement and cracking” and “structural destabilization” of its building and neighboring properties, according to CBS News and The Associated Press.
Court records show Townhouse Builders’ attorneys obtained four deadline extensions to answer the complaint without filing a response, with no docket entries posted since 2022, The Associated Press reported. Townhouse Builders denied separate 2016 Manhattan adjacent-property damage allegations in court papers before that suit was resolved out of court.
Professional engineer Jieming Wang of LMW Engineering Group LLC in Linden, New Jersey, is listed on the support-of-excavation filing for 2625 Bedford Ave., which specified tangent or secant piles, shoring and bracing, and soldier piles with wood lagging alongside special inspection requirements for sheeting, shoring and bracing, according to ENR. In plan-review responses cited by the publication, Wang specified that dry pack would prevent soil loss across a maximum 6-foot lagging span with design surcharge loads of 40 and 100 pounds per square foot.
Engineering notes on the filing reviewed by ENR required immediate notification of the construction manager, owner and engineer if vertical or lateral building movement reached a quarter-inch or vibration exceeded a half-inch per second. Work was required to stop if movement reached a half-inch, if vibration exceeded three-quarters of an inch per second, or if an individual crack-gauge reading exceeded 2 millimeters.
Records on the DOB NOW online portal listed the sheeting, shoring and bracing special inspection category as identified but not yet certified as completed as of Thursday, ENR reported — a status indicating only that certification had not been logged in the portal rather than establishing whether inspections occurred. Neither Townhouse Builders Inc., Waisbrod nor Wang had responded to press requests for comment.
Structural engineering and fire-safety specialists cautioned that determining the exact failure mechanism will require forensic investigation. Abi Aghayere, a professor of civil engineering at Drexel University who studies structural failures, told The Associated Press that investigators should examine whether the submitted shoring designs were adequate and whether construction work followed them, noting four primary failure possibilities: construction vibrations weakening the older structure, unmonitored structural movement, insufficiently stiff shoring, or groundwater seepage shifting soil beneath the existing foundation.
“With an old building like this, the room for error is very, very, very, very slim,” Aghayere told The Associated Press.
Glenn Corbett, an associate professor of fire science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told The Associated Press it was “way too early to know what caused the accident,” adding: “It could be a design flaw, it could be a construction flaw, or it could be some kind of work that was going on.” Corbett said it appeared the shoring around the excavation failed, though finding out why will require further investigation.
Mehrdad Sasani, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northeastern University, was reported as saying by Northeastern Global News that removing soil next to an older structure without adequate lateral support can undermine its foundation. “When you dig particularly deep just adjacent to the building, the foundation and the soil under the building” need to be properly supported, Sasani said. “I would suspect they went deep down and didn’t provide proper support for the soil.”
Municipal filings show 2625 Bedford Ave. is owned by W6 Facility X, a limited liability company led by Robert Fischman, with Cheng-Yi Lin Architecture listed as architect of record. Records cited by Northeastern Global News show the parcel’s owner sent a June 10 letter to neighboring landlords stating that excavation would begin within 30 days and that all precautions would be taken “to protect all properties adjacent.”
A March 5 pre-construction photographic survey filed with the pending nine-story application documented that the neighboring 1930 building at 1321 Flatbush Ave. was already in “poor” condition prior to excavation, citing masonry misalignments, cracks and major deficiencies along its north wall facing the pit, according to ENR.
City housing records also show the collapsed building at 1321 Flatbush Ave. — owned by Isolag Realty Corporation, with Olufemi Falade listed as registered agent — had 98 open housing maintenance violations dating back to 1972, including electrical, vermin and smoke-detector infractions, though it had zero open Department of Buildings structural violations prior to Wednesday.
Earlier this year, the DOB issued a stop-work order on March 20 at 2625 Bedford Ave. after inspectors found demolition underway without required overhead protection for neighboring properties, followed by a Class 1 violation on April 23 after inspectors found demolition had continued despite the order. City records show the violations carried fines of $2,500 and $10,000, both of which were paid, and the stop-work order was lifted on May 8 after the issues were corrected — months before excavation began.
The demolition contractor involved in that earlier phase emailed CBS News New York stating it only performed the demolition months ago and was not involved in the excavation underway Wednesday.
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said his office is working with the DOB and police to determine whether any criminal conduct contributed to the deaths.
New York City Emergency Management and the American Red Cross operated a reception center for displaced residents at the Flatbush YMCA at 1401 Flatbush Ave., and police kept Flatbush Avenue closed between Clarendon Road and Bedford Avenue.
Brooklyn-based Townhouse Builders Inc. — which also operates under the name Promont — is the contractor listed on municipal earthwork and support-of-excavation permits for 2625 Bedford Ave., according to city filings reviewed by Engineering News-Record and The Associated Press.
The firm holds an active New York City Department of Buildings general contractor registration (License No. 602821) alongside a Department of Consumer and Worker Protection home improvement contractor license (License No. 1475031-DCA), according to city licensing records.
