Four buildings near a Manhattan high-rise remain under evacuation orders as crews work to reinforce the structure that was feared to be at risk of collapse, according to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Wednesday.
The 37-story building on East 42nd Street prompted evacuations after support columns buckled and several floors began to sag early Tuesday morning.
Since then, the mayor said, emergency crews have been working around the clock to support the structure.
Mamdani said that normally busy midtown streets around the construction site also remained closed. The “frozen zone” that was established to bar pedestrian and foot traffic below the building has "narrowed" amid initial fears of a possible building collapse.
“The building is stable and yet we are going to continue to prioritize the safety of all in that immediate area,” Mamdani told reporters.
The frozen zone will continue to narrow as progress continues to be made, the mayor noted.
Meanwhile, crews worked overnight to stabilize the section of the building where beams had buckled and floors had sagged. Mamdani said inspectors had detected no new movement at the building during their latest inspection.
The city’s Department of Buildings shared photos on social media that showed multiple steel rods inserted side-by-side next to a large, bent column.
The high-rise building was in the process of being converted from office space into residential apartments.
The mayor vowed that the city will conduct a broader inquiry and "rigorous assessment" into what went wrong and what can be done to prevent a more devastating incident after the emergency work is completed.
“As soon as we answer the emergency questions around safety in this moment, we are going to be conducting a full investigation as to how we got to this point,” Mamdani said. “Because this is not a necessary consequence of an office-to-residential conversion. This, however, is clearly a breakdown in that process.”
The emergency work at the high-rise is being supervised by the owner’s engineer and an independent, third-party engineering firm hired by the building owner.
The mayor also said that no injuries have been reported and all construction workers have been accounted for.