Several streets in the heart of Manhattan were evacuated during the morning rush hour after a building under renovation began showing signs of collapse. No injuries were reported - but the scene was alarming enough to mobilize around 130 firefighters and medical personnel, plus drones. When load-bearing columns buckle on a 37-story building, even New York stops.

"Two columns buckled, and the floors suffered multiple cracks and depressions. The building is still unstable," the mayor said at a press conference, adding that since arriving at the scene they had noticed further shifting of one of the weakened columns. Firefighters were called after bricks began to fall - and upon arrival discovered the columns had buckled on the 21st and 22nd floors, with sunken floors all the way up to the 26th.

This is no ordinary building. This former headquarters of the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, near Grand Central and the United Nations headquarters, is being converted into luxury apartments - the largest office-to-residential conversion in New York to date. The nearly 120,000-square-meter project was meant to deliver around 1,600 rental apartments by early 2027. The developer still insists that "the whole building isn't in danger" - a sentence anyone who's heard something similar in the Balkans recognizes with a bitter taste.

A representative of the construction workers' union pointed to the real pain of the story. "This is what happens when you add weight to a poorly designed or poorly built building," he explained. "I've worked in construction for 21 years and I've never seen a column buckle - that's extremely dangerous." When luxury is built on old foundations for a quick profit, physics sends the bill. The only question is whether it arrives before or after the last sale is signed.