Officials with the city Buildings Department said they are increasingly confident that the compromised Midtown tower feared to be in danger of collapse is beginning to “stabilize,” after emergency teams worked through the night to reinforce the structure.
Crews successfully installed temporary supports at the 37-story former Pfizer headquarters, which is under construction on East 42nd Street near Second Avenue, allowing authorities to reduce the evacuated “frozen zone” to just a few nearby blocks, Buildings Commissioner Ahmed Tigani said.
“We are feeling confident that many of the emergency shoring measures that have been put in place as a result of extensive discussions with the building owner, the contractor, their licensed professional, is stabilizing the situation,” Tigani told reporters during a Tuesday night news conference.
The “shifting” high-rise, currently being converted from office space into apartments, triggered a dramatic evacuation during the morning commute, forcing people out of eight neighboring buildings as officials shut down nine blocks and rushed to prevent a potential disaster.
A third-party engineer was also called in to “verify and act as another set of eyes,” helping determine whether emergency personnel could safely enter the affected floors, where beams were reportedly “bending like cigarattes,” to install temporary supports such as struts or jacks designed to brace the building’s weakened areas.
Tigani said emergency shoring is meant as a short-term safeguard, keeping the buckling structure steady while engineers, investigators and contractors determine a permanent fix to prevent any further collapse.
Additional steel has also been put in place to provide “stability and [allow] workers and the materials to move into place and keep the building in a stable situation,” the commissioner said.
The former Pfizer building was monitored from both the interior and exterior throughout Tuesday, and investigators had not detected any additional movement by Tuesday evening.
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“If there is any movement…we have protocols in place to make sure we’re quickly removing people outside the building to evaluate and reassess,” Tigani said.
“But right now, we have been in a stable and safe situation,” he said Tuesday night.
A partial evacuation order has been lifted from several blocks — with only East 42nd and East 43rd Streets between Second and Third Avenues currently restricted to vehicular traffic.
Any other traffic and pedestrian restrictions in the previously frozen zone have been lifted, the commissioner added.
Traffic will return to Second and Third Avenues first and DOB personnel will be on the ground to manage the situation, Commissioner Tigani said.
The only buildings still under a full evacuation order are 815 Second Ave., 235 East 43rd St., 321 E 43rd St., and 225 East 43rd St.
A building at 217 East 43rd St. is currently under a partial evacuation order for the ground-floor restaurant, but residential floors were able to be re-occupied this evening.
Any other building given a full evacuation order earlier Tuesday can be re-occupied.
While he was unable to provide an exact timeline when the situation is fully stabilized, Commissioner Tigani assured New Yorkers that the city is working “tremendously hard to ensure they are safe and that they can travel through their neighborhood in a safe way.”
“We don’t see any further movement, and we feel confident in this — [it’s the] reason why we’re shrinking the frozen zone, that we’re in a situation where it is safe to continue going to those areas that we have pulled back, and that we’ve reopened to the public,” he concluded.
