A zero tolerance campaign on buckling up will get underway this Memorial Day weekend.
New York state troopers, sheriff’s deputies and local police statewide will set up checkpoints and dedicating more patrols to enforcement of the seat-belt law. State Police Commander Peter Person says the Buckle Up New York Campaign will last through June 5.
A row house undergoing renovations in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, collapsed yesterday in a cascade of bricks, cinder blocks, mortar and scaffolding. At least two construction workers buried beneath the rubble were among the 11 people who were injured, one critically, the authorities said.
The collapse occurred about 1:15 p.m. at 103 Meserole Street on a residential block just east of Williamsburg’s enclave of Hasidic Jews.
Firefighters, who were on the scene in less than five minutes, encountered a score of shaken, dust-covered workers who had escaped the wreckage, and who feared that others, buried under debris on the building’s second floor, had been killed.
“I started calling their names, and no one answered,” said Benitas Joseph, 36, one of the workers who escaped serious harm and immediately scrambled through the piles of debris in search of those who were trapped. “I was frightened,” he said. “I thought everybody was dead.”
