Two elderly cats who were trapped after a car garage’s collapse in New York City have been reunited with their owner, providing a sliver of good news in what was otherwise a deadly mishap.
Sandy Imhoff was reunited with her two cats – 12-year-old Dave and Cathy, 14 – on Thursday after the cats and other felines were trapped in an adjacent apartment building when the garage collapsed.
“I personally didn’t think the cats were going to survive,” Imhoff said.
The cats were found under Imhoff’s bed at 55 Ann Street, where Zach Iscol, New York City’s emergency management commissioner, said “a number” of felines were rescued by department of buildings (DOB) workers days after the collapse, the website Gothamist reported.
Imhoff, who has lived in her building since 1977, tried to evacuate with her pets shortly after Tuesday’s collapse but was unable to corral the cats in time. A neighbor ultimately helped Imhoff get her 11-year-old dog out of the building.
DOB workers initially went in but couldn’t locate the missing cats.
Days after the crash, Imhoff hadn’t been able to re-enter her building as it is under a full vacate order because of safety concerns related to the collapsed garage next door.
But DOB employees safely re-entered Imhoff’s building Thursday and found her cats.
“I was just amazed that they did such a good job,” Imhoff said, referring to the DOB workers. “They found them so fast.”
“DOB does a lot,” Iscol said. “They do the engineering, they do a lot of the contracting oversight, they do the investigations. Also, pet rescue.”
The deadly collapse in the city’s lower Manhattan area killed one person – the garage’s longtime manager Willis Moore – and injured five others.
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An unnamed worker was trapped on the garage’s upper floor before being rescued.
The building, which had several open building violations at the time it crumbled, was “all the way pancaked, collapsed all the way to the cellar floor”, said New York City’s acting buildings commissioner, Kazimir Vilenchik.
Authorities noted that the collapse left the building too unstable for first responders to enter, so searches were conducted with a drone and a robotic dog.