Rescuers searched for survivors yesterday after a 19-storey crane toppled on to a block in midtown Manhattan, demolishing a fourstorey townhouse and leaving at least four people dead.

The crane broke away from its moorings at 2.22pm on Saturday when a piece of steel fell and sheared off one of the ties holding it to a half-built, 44-storey apartment block, as workers tried to extend it so that they could start work on a new floor.

The crane shaft swung on to a building across the street with minimal damage. But the 23m (75ft) boom and its cab snapped off and plummeted on to the townhouse at 305 East 50th Street.

Stephen Kaplan, an owner of the Reliance Construction Group, said: “It was an absolute freak accident. All the piece of steel had to do was fall slightly left or right, and nothing would have happened.” The collapse created a dust cloud over Manhattan that one eyewitness described as a “mini-World Trade Centre”.

John LaGreco, who owns the bar on the ground floor of the crushed building, said he was lucky to be alive. “Our bar is done,” he said. “The crane crushed the whole building. If I wasn’t watching a Yankees game, I would’ve come to work early and gotten killed.”

Kerry Walker, who lived on the top floor of the townhouse, said that he escaped only because he had just gone out to buy a bottle of aspirin.

One man was rescued after three and a half hours under the rubble, but rescue crews using thermal imaging, listening devices and dogs were still searching for a woman and two construction workers believed to be trapped in the debris.

The four people confirmed dead were all identified as construction workers — Brad Cohen, Aaron Stephens, Anthony Mazza and Wayne Binder. At least 17 people were injured, three critically.

About 1,000 people were evacuated from buildings in the area, near the UN, and about 40 were put up for the night in a local high school.

Lieutenant-Governor David Paterson, who takes over from Eliot Spitzer, the disgraced New York Governor, today, said: “It’s a horrible situation, very gory. There’s blood in the street.” The death toll could have been much worse had the crane collapsed on a weekday, when the midtown streets are full of office workers. Witnesses said that the crane creaked before it fell, giving people time to flee. Bruce Silberblatt, a retired building contractor who lives in the area, said he had called the city building department 12 days before the accident to say that the crane was not properly braced.

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