The Flatbush Tragedy Tells the Story of New York

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The building was owned by a notorious slumlord, the developer next door was known for cutting corners, and the people killed were immigrants living—as newcomers to the city always have—in cramped and dilapidated conditions.

By Thursday night, a day after 1321 Flatbush Avenue, a three-story building in Brooklyn, collapsed, the site was strictly a salvage job. Rain poured down and lightning flashed as a demolition crew used an enormous yellow excavator to hoist debris into red dumpsters. The excavator took giant bites of the pile, pulling up gnarls of sheet metal, insulation, and electric wiring. Poking out from the top of one dumpster: a Dunkin’ bag, an empty Styrofoam Cup Noodles, a can of Celsius. A few local television reporters were huddled up across the street, the lights of their cameras trained at the disaster area, but the F.D.N.Y. was already rolling up soggy tents.

In the steady rain, lit up by N.Y.P.D. spotlights, the hushed site could have been a movie set—someone’s idea of a New York City calamity. “It looks like 9/11,” Novella Spence, a witness to Wednesday’s tragedy, told Curbed. “There was mist from the crumble, and the side of the building was gone.” 1321 Flatbush Avenue, which had stood since 1930, most recently with a façade of dusty white brick, housed a medical-uniform-and-supply store on its first floor and two floors of apartments above.

As a result of the collapse, eight people died—including a nine-year-old girl and a ten-year-old boy—and nearly twenty people were injured, including four firefighters. The hope of additional rescues was dashed on Thursday afternoon when heavy rains began. “Rain can flood those voids where they are still searching and destabilize the ground they are on,” Laura Kavanagh, a former F.D.N.Y. commissioner, said; she explained that the death toll was likely so high because people were home from work and school on Veterans Day.

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