More than 100 people have been unexpectedly uprooted. Their apartments are now completely exposed after a corner of the building fell to ruins on the street below.
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The displaced tenants of 1915 Billingsley Terrace walked a few blocks to their new, temporary home Monday night: the basement of PS 390, as the Red Cross set up shop outside the middle school.
Some of the tenants were inside the apartment building when disaster struck.
"I was there sleeping. I ran out when I heard the rumble of the collapse and when I ran down the stairs with everyone else who was running, I fell," said displaced tenant Domingo Taveras.
The evacuated building has 47 apartments along with a half-dozen businesses, according to the FDNY.
One woman who spoke with Eyewitness News lived on the sixth floor with 12 other people, most of them adults. Only a mom and three kids were inside the apartment at the time of the collapse.
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"We don't know where we are going to stay," said displaced tenant Marjorie Medal. "What's happening is we have the kids, and we don't know. Our concern is for the kids."
One of the tenants wasn't in the building at the time, rather she was driving a school bus that narrowly dodged the collapse.
The bus driver, named Mari, was done for the day. She was alone on the bus and about to park it at the school closest to her building, when suddenly pieces of her building came raining down.
Surveillance video captures the small school bus getting out of the way just in time.
She told Eyewitness News that she could see in the large side mirrors, something coming towards her. She says she moved the bus to the right and turned, smacking into an MTA bus as the building collapsed to her left. She fears that if she had turned left, she wouldn't be here.
The displaced tenants are amazed and thankful none of their neighbors or friends suffered serious injury.
Nonetheless, a structural disaster at their home two weeks before Christmas adds a new and unwelcome layer of difficulty.
"I got home from work and look what I encountered," said one tenant, originally from Venezuela. "I don't know. First I'm an immigrant and as soon as I overcome one challenge here comes another."
The Red Cross has provided 37 households, about 138 people, with emergency assistance, including housing assistance, meals and other resources.
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The devastating reality of what happened Monday afternoon, coupled with the helpless uncertainty of what lies ahead, is a double dose of hardship for people sheltering in a public-school basement and wondering where they will go from here.
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