Contractors have been cleared to begin installing emergency steel supports inside an unstable Manhattan high-rise after engineers found two structural columns had buckled and floors were sagging across five storeys of the 37-storey building.
The former Pfizer headquarters at 235 East 42nd Street is undergoing the largest office-to-residential conversion in United States history, and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has established a frozen zone spanning five blocks of Midtown, closing the area to all traffic.
Seven neighbouring buildings have been evacuated, including a school running a summer camp for four hundred children and the Israeli Consulate.
Mitch Mccann reports from New York.
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Mitch Mccann in New York says the scale of the emergency has left normally bustling streets in Midtown largely deserted, with a collapse zone established around the building.
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Mitch Mccann in New York says the building was already the subject of multiple safety complaints before Tuesday's emergency, and the city's buildings department has filed a complaint against the owner for allegedly carrying out unapproved work.
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