Witnesses who watched a Brooklyn building come crashing down felt helpless amid the chaos

NEW YORK (AP) — Before the screams started, Dervie Mapp heard loud popping noises outside her Brooklyn apartment. She bolted out of bed to the kitchen window and watched as a neighboring building came crashing down, raining three stories of bricks and twisted metal. Stunned survivors cried out amid thick dust and piles of rubble that moments earlier had been people’s homes. “I saw the whole thing come down,” Mapp, a 67-year-old retiree, told The Associated Press on Thursday. “People were running up out of the pit, screaming and hollering. I couldn’t believe it — I froze.” The deadly collapse that occurred without warning Wednesday afternoon took down a building that housed a store selling medical uniforms on the ground level and four apartments on the floors above. Eight people perished, including two children who were Colombian nationals, according to the Colombian consulate in New York.

This excerpt comes from the named source. Read the original for the full reporting.