Watch: Chilling Video Captures Mom, Children Panicking as Brooklyn Building They're Living In Collapses Around Them
Chilling video footage recorded from an apartment surveillance camera captured the stunning moment a Brooklyn apartment building collapsed around 4 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday.
The camera footage was taken from the third-floor apartment of resident Anderson Velez, according to Gothamist.
While he wasn’t home when the building collapsed, his wife and two sons were. All three survived.
The footage showed Velez’s older son retrieving a gallon of milk from the fridge while his 2-year-old brother was playing on the floor.
Then all of a sudden, the entire room began shaking as if an earthquake had hit.
The older brother ran to his mother, who had just opened a door to the room moments earlier. The 2-year-old meanwhile moved toward his mother just in time, right before the wall caved in on the spot where he’d been playing.
TERRIFYING FOOTAGE: The horrifying moment a building collapsed in Brooklyn on Wednesday, claiming eight lives and leaving several others in critical condition. https://t.co/1ZXC9bLXRU
— NYScanner (@nyscanner) November 12, 2026
“That movement, in my opinion, saved his life,” Velez later told Gothamist in an interview, describing his younger son’s last-minute move from the floor.
According to Gothamist, Velez rushed home after receiving a call from his wife.
“Everything was going through my mind,” he recalled. “I was thinking about my children, hoping they were okay and that nothing serious had happened to them. God heard me because I prayed so much for their health and well-being.”
When he arrived home, he found his frantic wife screaming at rescue workers to pull their sons from the rubble. While both of the boys survived, the older one sustained injuries to his skull, while the younger one sustained scrapes to his forehead and legs.
“His ears were full of dirt, his nose, his little mouth, his back — his entire body was covered in dirt,” Velez said, describing how the 2-year-old looked after being pulled from the rubble.
Velez’s family was one of the lucky ones. Eight people were killed because of the building’s collapse.
“Six bodies were recovered from the rubble, and two people died at the hospital,” local station WABC-TV reported. “Two of the dead were construction workers and two were children.”
In a video statement shared to social media, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani also confirmed that six adults and two children were killed.
We are mourning too many people we love in the aftermath of yesterday’s tragedy.
We will grieve and rebuild as one city. https://t.co/OyjpMQjIjp
— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) November 12, 2026
Velez confirmed to Gothamist that his family had known the two children who died. The children had lived in an apartment one floor beneath them.
According to Gothamist, a representative for the city’s Department of Buildings confirmed that they’re still investigating the cause of the collapse. What’s known is that the building was almost 100 years old and that it fell into an adjacent construction site.
The developer of the property adjacent to the fatal Brooklyn building collapse had a record for cutting corners at the construction site, records show.
https://t.co/qz2JX4rvCH https://t.co/nD1rFgE8gi— Gothamist (@Gothamist) November 12, 2026
In addition, the city government “previously penalized the development team” involved with the construction site “for cutting corners and ignoring a stop work order,” Gothamist reported.
Work on the construction site was reportedly ongoing when the apartment building next door collapsed.
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