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by JOHN DOYLE, LORENA MONGELLI and BRIDGET HARRISON
Eleven construction workers were showered by an avalanche of bricks, cinderblocks and plywood yesterday after part of a Brooklyn building collapsed while they were bricking a wall.
All of the men miraculously survived — but two were in critical condition after desperate co-workers and firefighters dug them out from the debris in Williamsburg.
The injured workers, who suffered broken bones, cuts and bruises, were rushed to Bellevue and Elmhurst hospitals.
Four other workers escaped unscathed.
"I heard a boom and all I saw was bricks and wood coming through the floor," said worker Peter Brahm, 31, who was on the ground floor when the accident occurred. "I just made it out as the stuff was falling behind me."
The thunderous cascade began at 1:15 p.m. while workers were constructing a wall upward from the second floor of the long-vacant tenement at 103 Meserole St. they were renovating, authorities said.
"Both side walls were being scaffolded and they were putting blocks up so they could raise the flooring, raise the roof of the building and enlarge the space," said FDNY Brooklyn Commander Edward Kilduff. "The block came loose, collapsing the scaffolding, trapping the workers underneath."
Workers who escaped the cascade crawled back through the wreckage to look for their colleagues.
"I started to call their names," said worker Benitas Joseph, 26 who helped with the rescue. "We went upstairs and found four guys under the blocks. It was dangerous . . . all the blocks were spread everywhere.
"I was scared. I thought everybody was dead."
Members of FDNY Rescue Co. 2 and Ladder 146 found two workers buried by debris in "a very critical condition," Kilduff said.
FDNY backhoes demolished the remaining walls last night.
The Department of Buildings said the construction company had permits for a "vertical enlargement of the second and third floors, a new facade, beam and window replacement."
But the firm, Precision Construction, had received a stop-work order on March 18 for not building a wall in front of the property.
Work had restarted when that wall was built, said a spokesman.
"The brick wall was getting very high and precarious looking," said neighbor David Allaband, 29, whose worries prompted him to photograph the construction days before the collapse.
Additional reporting by Erika Martinez and Tatiana Deligiannakis
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