Source: New York Post
The developer of a Midtown Manhattan skyscraper evacuated after its support beams began buckling has described the incident as a “freak accident,” as he looked to deny that the building was at risk of collapse. At least nine neighboring buildings had to be evacuated on Tuesday after construction workers inside the 37-story building noticed that support columns had started to collapse, during work converting the former Pfizer headquarters into apartments. “This is a freak accident that something occurred with these two specific columns that either were not reinforced or were not reinforced sufficiently, and they gave way,” Nathan Berman, the developer behind the conversion of the building, said in an interview with the Real Deal, a real estate publication.