"I'm on the top floor where the bed is hanging," said building superintendent Pete Rolle, 29. "The kids' room just disappeared. It fell away."
All residents escaped unharmed from the collapse at 1549 Prospect Place in Crown Heights, but Rolle said if the wall had crumbled just a couple of hours earlier, his 4- and 5-year-old children would have been thrown from the building.
"My kids [would] be dead," he said.
Rolle's wife was taken to St. Mary's Hospital just across the street. "She's just more scared than anything else," he said.
The rear wall of the building fell around 9:30 a.m., forcing the evacuation of the 24-apartment building that also houses a restaurant and medical office. Eleven families, including 20 adults and seven children, registered for Red Cross emergency assistance.
City inspectors were slated to go through the building late yesterday to determine exactly what caused the collapse - but speculated that jackhammers excavating a site next door for construction of a new building contributed to the collapse.
Deputy Assistant Fire Chief Edward Kilduff said, "We believe the excavation undermined the wall on the rear of the building.
"The contractor had a permit to erect a three-story building," the firefighter said. "We're assuming the excavation caused some sort of trauma to the wall."
Marvin Tentio, 46, was home when the bricks came tumbling down.
"I just heard the bang - like a crushing sound," he said. "The next thing I heard were firetrucks and someone banging on my door."
Tentio, who moved in just two months ago, was trying to remain upbeat.
"I'm just very happy that nobody got hurt," he said.
Resident Roger Maynor said he was returning home around 10:30 a.m. when he saw the commotion.
"I saw the ladder. I thought it was a fire. I didn't know [the wall] collapsed until I came down here," Maynor said.
"It collapsed right where my apartment is."
Later in the day, fire officials allowed some tenants with front-facing apartments inside to retrieve some belongings.
Al Weiss, the owner of the building, checked in with many of the now-homeless residents, and one of his daughters rescued a cat from a vacated apartment.
Weiss said he'd recently installed new appliances and upgraded the bathrooms.
"And [there are] two new boilers. This is their first winter," he said.
For days, he said, he'd been seeing a huge crane and the workers digging in the back.
"When [the wall] collapsed the crane was gone, the guys are gone, the trucks are gone. Everybody ran. They disappeared."
Rolle had taken his kids to school before the collapse and was wondering what to tell them when he picked them up.
"I'll tell them we can't go home," he said.
Rolle figured they'd stay temporarily with his mother in The Bronx.
They'll go with only the clothes on their backs. All their possessions are trapped inside the vacated building.
Rolle also blamed the construction workers next door.
"They didn't know what they were doing," he said.
"I was up because someone came up and rang the bell and told me that the wall was cracking."
He even pulled up a window to yell at the workers.
"I was going to tell the guys in the yard to stop their jackhammers," he said.
But it was too late.
"I saw the whole wall fall apart. I had to run into the room and pull my wife out of the bed. She was on the bed."
The headboard to that bed is teetering on the edge - overlooking a four-story drop into the pit that was dug for the foundation next door.
"I'm lucky because everybody's safe," Rolle said. "The material things aren't important to me. Life is more important than anything else."
