Two children and six adults died when a 96-year-old apartment building collapsed on Nov. 11 at 1321 Flatbush Ave. in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, USA Today reported.
Eighteen people, including 14 civilians and four firefighters, were injured in the tragedy.
The cause of the three-story structure’s destruction remains unclear as investigators examine permits, complaints, and public records. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said that an investigation into the construction site and the collapsed building is underway.
A report filed in March with the city’s Department of Buildings described the collapsed building’s north facade as being “in poor condition with noticeable cracks identified.” Glenn Corbett, an associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former member of the federal advisory committee of the National Construction Safety Team, told USA Today that those issues should have triggered further investigation.
“That should have triggered somebody going back there and looking at, ‘Why is this wall cracked, and if I start digging 25 feet away, how is that going to affect this?’” said Glenn Corbett, associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Corbett said that something likely went wrong with the shoring system, causing soil from adjacent properties to flow into the excavation pit. That movement could have pushed the shoring up at a 45-degree angle and destabilized the neighboring building.
Decades of Violations and Prior Owner Penalties
Department of Housing Preservation and Development records list 98 violations for the property stretching back to 1972. Twenty-one of those are Class C or immediately hazardous violations for issues such as peeling lead paint, a leaking roof, and unsafe electrical wiring.
City records show the building is owned by Isolag Realty group. According to a state database, Olufemi Falade serves as the registered agent for that enterprise and as the primary executive for Femi Realty Corp, which previously owned the property.
Falade faced a 12-day jail sentence and $50,000 in fines in 2006 for failing to fix more than 600 housing violations across his buildings, according to reports in the New York Times and New York Daily News cited by USA Today.
Adjacent Excavation and Sweeps Across the City
Developers had “a plan approved for a three-story building” and were doing excavation work at the site, Ahmed Tigani, the commissioner of the city’s department of buildings, said at a November 11 press conference. The developers sought to build a nine-story, mixed-use building with a grocery store on the first floor and residential housing above, according to a proposal on the city’s zoning website.
N Tech Design of America demolished a one-story building on the site despite a stop-work order issued in March, a city summons from April shows. Neighboring properties received official notices via certified mail in June to inform them that digging operations would commence within a month.
Mayor Mamdani said that the Department of Buildings identified five entities associated with the construction site that are tied to 100 other sites across the city. The department is launching sweeps of those locations to ensure safety.
Anil Kumar Y. Agrawal, a civil engineer and professor at City College of New York, told USA Today that all factors were present for a collapse.
“It’s engineering, and if you do it carefully, you can prevent accidents,” said Anil Kumar Y. Agrawal, a civil engineer and professor at City College of New York. “In this instance, he said, “something went wrong at the very basic level.”
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