Residents of a NYC public housing tower escape unharmed after a massive chimney collapses

A portion of a public housing apartment in New York City has collapsed leaving a corner of the building in a pile of rubble.

NEW YORK -- A massive brick chimney running 20 stories up the side of a New York City apartment building collapsed after an explosion Wednesday, sending tons of debris plummeting to the ground.

The falling bricks buried a sidewalk, landed on the playground of the public housing building and sent a cloud of dust billowing over the block in the Bronx, but amazingly did not injure anyone.

“We avoided a major disaster here,” said Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson at a news conference.

Mayor Eric Adams confirmed no injuries or deaths were reported in the collapse of the chimney, which rose up the side of the building from the boiler room. Authorities learned of an explosion just after 8 a.m. and were trying to determine if there had been a gas leak.

The mayor noted that Oct. 1 is typically the first day that heating systems are turned on for the season.

One resident, Merlyn Olivo, said she was in her apartment when she heard a large noise like a bomb.

“And the building was shaking a lot. I was so scared,” she said, feeling like it was “the end of the world.”

Olivo heard another loud noise and then her sister-in-law, who lives across the street, told her to get out of the building because of the collapse outside. Luckily, her daughters had left for school.

The mound of debris was littered with air conditioners, which appeared to have been ripped out of apartment windows by the falling bricks. News helicopter footage showed a rescue dog bounding over the huge pile of bricks at the bottom of the building, sniffing for anyone who might be buried under the rubble.

Olivo didn’t know when she might get back into the building, or whether she wanted to.

“I don’t feel safe to go in there,” she said. “I’m scared, super scared.”

City officials in charge of public buildings said they were investigating to see what went wrong, and Department of Buildings Commissioner James Oddo said he believed work was being done on the boiler.

Some apartments were being evacuated as a precaution and services for residents were being made available at a nearby community center, officials said.

The city’s Emergency Management Commissioner, Zach Iscol, said building inspectors are checking the building’s foundations and the apartments in the impacted area to make sure they are sound. The mayor said the building will be repaired.

Around half a million New Yorkers live in aging buildings run by the city’s housing authority, known as NYCHA, which is the largest in the nation.

Many of the properties date back to the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s. In 2019, a federal monitor was appointed to address chronic problems like lead paint, mold and lack of heat. When he wrapped his five-year term in 2024, the monitor, Bart Schwartz, noted that the overarching issue for residents remained the “poor physical state of NYCHA’s buildings.”

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Associated Press writers Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut, Michael Hill in Albany, New York, and Bruce Shipkowski in Toms River, New Jersey, contributed.