A crane collapsed into an apartment building in Dallas on Sunday, killing one person and injuring at least six others as heavy storms passed through the area, the authorities said.
Of the six injured, two were in critical condition at area hospitals.
The crane collapsed on top of Elan City Lights, an apartment complex in downtown Dallas.
Severe winds appeared to have played a role in the collapse, Jason Evans, a spokesman for the Dallas Fire-Rescue Department, said at a news conference, adding that the crane had been erected at a nearby building that was under construction.
He said the dead victim was found in a residential part of the five-story building.
“Our No. 1 priority is the living area on the easternmost side of the building, where it appears that all five stories at some point inside the structure have collapsed,” Mr. Evans said. “This is the same area in which the deceased person was discovered.”
An adjoining multilevel parking garage was also severely damaged.
“We have no idea at this point whether any people were in those cars, or just in that parking garage in general,” Mr. Evans said. “We only hope that what we found up to this point is where the damage, and where the impact, stops.”
Videos and photos taken in the aftermath of the collapse showed vehicles from multiple floors crumpled together in a mess of broken concrete. They also showed that remnants of the crane had sliced through the residential area of the complex, littering a courtyard with debris.
One woman captured the moment of the collapse in a video from her apartment. The crane, which towered over its surroundings, could be seen slowly tilting before crashing.
The woman, Sophie Daigle, 22, said the storm passed through the area relatively quickly. “I was just randomly filming the wind, to show my roommates, and caught the collapse,” she said. “It was loud and scary.”
The storm caused damage across much of the Dallas area, toppling trees and power lines.
In Seattle in April, four people were killed after a construction crane fell from the top of a building and crushed six vehicles on the street below, officials said.
