1 man is dead after a parking garage partially collapsed in Grays Ferry

One man has died after a multi-story parking garage under construction partially collapsed Wednesday afternoon in the city’s Grays Ferry section, police said.

The collapse occurred around 2:15 p.m. at 30th Street and Grays Ferry Avenue across the street from the Grays Ferry Shopping Center, police said.

One man rescued from the scene was transported to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 3:03 p.m., police said.

The collapse occurred in the stairwell of the structure, which appeared to have seven levels.

It was not immediately clear if anyone else was trapped in the rubble.

Philadelphia Fire Commissioner Jeffrey W. Thompson said he expected search and rescue operations to be a “protracted” effort as emergency workers waited for the building to be stabilized.

“For the safety of my team, we have to stabilize that structure before we can continue our search and rescue operations,” Thompson said during brief remarks to the media Wednesday afternoon. He did not take questions from reporters, and did not say how many people emergency workers may be looking for.

Thompson added that officials were putting together a team of engineers to work on stabilizing the building, but did not say how long that process might take. He did, however, ask members of the public to stay away from the area as work continues.

“It’s going to take some time, because we have to make sure that building is stabilized correctly before we can continue work,” Thompson said.

The collapse location is the site of a planned 300,000-square-foot parking garage being built for Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

In 2024, the Philadelphia Business Journal reported that CHOP paid almost $25 million for the 3.4-acre site.

The parking garage was envisioned to allow CHOP workers to more easily drive to work, using the garage and then taking a shuttle to the hospital.

Some community members and environmentalists have expressed concerns about the large scale of the project. The building would be by far the largest new free-standing garage built in recent Philadelphia history.

A spokesperson for CHOP could not be reached for comment on Wednesday.

THA Consulting, a planning and design firm based in Blue Bell and one of the engineers that worked on plans for the garage, declined to comment on the collapse.

Grady Fields, who lives near 30th and Wharton Streets, about two blocks from the construction site, said he heard a loud boom around 2:15 p.m.

“It shook our home,” Fields said. “I wasn’t sure what was going on.”

A short time later, Fields said, he went over to the site and noticed two large cracks in the building. As he was watching the scene, he added, he saw construction workers using a lift to get off the top of the garage, as well as workers clearing vehicles and bystanders away from the area on 30th Street.

“They were clearly worried about something falling on them,” he said.

A man working at the shopping center across the street said he was indoors when he heard a boom — more a heavy thud than an explosion.

In recent weeks, he had watched the structure rise “extremely fast,” and in the moment, he thought a slab had sheared off the side, said the man, who asked not to be named because he did not have his employer’s permission to speak.

He stepped outside and saw a plume of dust billowing upward, at least four stories high.

“It was pandemonium,” he said.

Workers fled from the building as chunks of debris continued to fall. Firefighters rushed in with a stretcher, he said, and soon reemerged carrying an immobilized man.

“They got to him pretty quick,” he said, “but he looked bad.”

When the collapse happened, Shawmar Pitts, 52, was at his mother’s home nearby on South 31st Street and heard a faint rumble, he said.

Minutes later, a colleague called with the answer: A parking garage under construction had partially collapsed.

Pitts went to the scene and stood behind yellow police tape in the parking lot of a Fresh Grocer across the street, watching as emergency crews worked amid the debris.

He had arrived shortly after the collapse, as officers sealed off the block and traffic backed up along the street, and after rescuers had pulled a man from the rubble.

Pitts, a co-managing director of the advocacy group Philly Thrive, said he and others had protested the project for months. They were there in February, he said, as the foundation was being laid.

“This is devastating,” he said.

Staff writers Jake Blumgart and Ximena Conde contributed to this article.