A high-rise apartment complex in Midtown Manhattan remains structurally unstable and is at risk of collapse after the building’s support columns started buckling on Tuesday morning, officials said.
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The area surrounding the 37-story building, situated near Grand Central Terminal, was evacuated after two structural support columns on its 21st floor began to buckle at around 8 a.m. local time.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and other city officials addressed reporters nearby, saying that the building “remains unstable” as of Tuesday afternoon. The mayor added that “since we have been on site in the early morning, we have seen continued shift of the structure.”
“This is an extremely serious situation, and I am thankful to our first responders for quickly arriving at the site, and to New Yorkers for reacting calmly and with urgency,” the mayor said.
The city’s fire commissioner said that because the building is made of steel, there is only a possibility of a “localized collapse” versus a “total collapse.”
Mamdani said that authorities were working “to develop plans to shore up the impacted floor. He said that if the floor is deemed to be secure, engineers will enter and begin shoring up the building as we await the arrival of materials that will stabilize the building.”
“I want to be honest with New Yorkers that this is a fast-developing situation,” Mamdani said. “We are taking it minute by minute, and I appreciate our city workers who have been on the forefront of that.”
The building has not moved since noon local time, according to two sources briefed on the investigation told NBC New York.
A team of six people, comprised of the New York City Fire Department, the Department of Buildings and the building’s contractor, entered to assess if shoring efforts are safe to begin, according to a city official familiar with the investigation.