Holy shit: a two-story building collapsed this morning on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, between 99th and 100th on Broadway. Apparently, an infant (whose mother was walking by the building with her when it collapsed) is in critical condition at St. Luke’s Hospital, and four other people are known to be injured as well. The building was vacant and was slated for demolition to make way for two enormous apartment buildings; police and firemen are apparently still sifting through the rubble looking for other victims, and bus and subway service is pretty much screwed through the area. The image at the right comes from WNBC’s slideshow of images from their news helicopter and photographers, images which do a good job of showing the true extent of the collapse. Shannon just forwarded me this image from Yahoo’s AP photo feed, which also shows the debris pile strewn into Broadway.

I lived exactly 1/2 a block north of that building from 1995 through 2003, and walked by it a half-dozen times a day. When Shannon and I were on the Upper West Side about two months ago, I noticed that the Gristedes supermarket inside that building had closed, and that the building looked like it was in terrible shape… I guess we now know that it really was. My thoughts go out to my old neighborhood!