Representative image of a building.
Credit: Reuters File Photo
Three people were killed and five were critically injured when a building under construction collapsed at an airport in Boise, Idaho, on Wednesday afternoon, officials said.
The building, a private hangar on the airfield of Boise Airport, collapsed at about 5 pm, Aaron Hummel, chief of operations for the Boise Fire Department, said at a news conference Wednesday.
"There was a large-scale collapse of the building, the framework of the building," Hummel said. It occurred while construction work was going on, and it also brought down a crane, he added. "It was fairly catastrophic."
Three people died at the scene and nine were injured, the City of Boise said in a statement late Wednesday. Five of the injured were in critical condition at local hospitals, the statement said. The names of the victims were not immediately released.
The Boise police and representatives from Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the US agency that regulates workplaces, were investigating the cause of the collapse, which was not immediately clear, Hummel said. Authorities did not identify the owner of the collapsed hangar.