Video – Yeshiva Students Injured During Class Picture

BROOKLYN, NY — At least 20 students, around ages 11 to 15, were injured around 10:30 a.m. on Friday when a grate gave way under them outside a Brooklyn school, causing them to fall into a basement, the authorities said. Fifteen students were taken to Maimonides Medical Center, according to the Fire Department, and an assemblyman said that other injured students were taken to New York Methodist Hospital and Lutheran Medical Center.

The school, the Shaarei Torah Elementary School, is a Jewish girls’ school at 222 Ocean Parkway, near Church Avenue, in the Kensington neighborhood, south of Prospect Park. The school has about 300 students from kindergarten to eighth grade.

A woman who answered the office phone at the school hung up, refusing to answer questions. The school is part of Yeshivat Shaare Torah, an Orthodox educational institution.

The grate — about 20 feet long and about 4 feet wide — is wedged into cement and runs along the front of the building. The space underneath the grate is empty and on the bottom is the basement floor.

About 25 to 30 students had left the building for a group picture, said Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who represents the neighborhood, in a phone interview from the scene of the accident. The children were “standing on a raised railing that suddenly caved in, they fell about 15 feet down, on top of each other,” he said. “It was an incredibly scary experience.”

Arye Klar, a volunteer member of the Hatzoloh volunteer ambulance service, said the grate fell in on only one side, so the children ended up rolling on top of each other. The grate was designed to let light into the lower levels of the building, and although it “wasn’t in that bad of a condition,” it was not intended to support the weight of multiple people.

Ruthie Levy, 11, a fifth grader, said that more than 30 were standing on the grate. “All of a sudden we felt it shaking,” she said. “We were trying to jump off it. It fell down. We were all trying to get out.”

Ruthie said she had some scratches. “We were able to climb out,” she said. “A lot of people got a scratch, but it’s nothing. Some people went to the hospital to get stitches. Everybody was crying.”

Joyce Srugo, 10, a fifth grader, said, “I didn’t fall. I held onto my friend. Some fell and went to the hospital. My friend’s getting stitches. I was crying. I thought it was like a dream.” The teachers came out of the school and immediately started helping the students, she said.

In the minutes after the accident, Assemblyman Hikind said, there was a flurry of alarm because of widespread concerns in the Jewish community about anti-Semitic attacks in the wake of the disruption, on Wednesday evening, of what the authorities are calling a terrorist plot to bomb two synagogues in the Bronx and to shoot down planes at an Air National Guard base in Newburgh, N.Y.

“Nobody was quite sure what it was,” Mr. Hikind said of the accident at the school. “In a sense we’re all very happy it wasn’t anything more serious.”

Mr. Hikind added: “On the one hand, thank God it wasn’t anything more. But it was an experience no one is going to forget.”