Three dead after hangar collapses at Idaho Airport

Three people were killed and five were seriously injured when a building under construction collapsed at an airport in Boise, Idaho, on Wednesday afternoon, officials said.

The building, a private hangar at the Boise Airport, collapsed around 5 p.m., 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 and the framework of the building,” Mr Hummel said. It happened while construction work was in progress and a crane also came down, he added. “It was quite catastrophic.”

Three people died at the scene and nine were injured, the city of Boise said in a statement rack late Wednesday. Five of the injured were in critical condition in local hospitals, the statement said. The names of the victims were not immediately released.

Boise police and representatives from OSHA, the U.S. agency that regulates workplaces, were investigating the cause of the collapse, which was not immediately clear, Mr. Hummel said. Authorities have not identified the owner of the collapsed hangar.