NEW ORLEANS-Tropical unrest over Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula is now being watched Tuesday by new Orleans authorities, who fear it could become a tropical depression or storm that would topple a partially collapsed building and two huge construction cranes onto neighboring buildings on the edge of the city’s historic French quarter.

It was the latest grim news delivered near where two people died on Saturday morning when the upper floors of a hotel under construction collapsed in a cloud of blinding dust. One body was left under the rubble on Tuesday night and hopes that the missing worker will be found alive in the wreckage were blackout after four days of risky searches.

Fire chief Tim McConnell said searchers using dogs and high-tech equipment were able to get a partial view of the body, which is known to have been in the building, but were unable to reach it or find the missing worker. Searchers found an unidentified liquid in the area they collected. It will be tested to determine if it was from a human body and whether it can be used to identify any victim.

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Meanwhile, a viable plan remained elusive to stabilize the remains of the building and two badly damaged cranes towering over the site – one McConnell is estimated to be close to 270 feet tall, the other about 300 feet. 

The city’s original plan to bring in other huge cranes to try to remove existing ones was nixed by engineers, McConnell said. The idea of trying to attach one of the cranes to the building to try and stabilise it was also rejected. “They were against moving it in any way, shape or form and didn’t believe it was safe enough to even get around it,” he said.

McConnell, accompanied by New Orleans national security Director Colleen Arnold, mayor LaToya Cantrell and other city officials, said authorities are satisfied that the block-long evacuation zone around the damaged structures is enough, if obeyed, to keep anyone else from harm if the structures fall.

But, unless a way is found to stabilise construction and cranes, neighbouring buildings and infrastructure at the intersection of the normally busy canal street and Rampart are at risk of catastrophic damage.

Any wind and rain is a problem, officials said, saying wind can affect cranes and rain can weaken dangling debris.

“It could become a tropical depression, maybe a tropical storm,” Arnold said of the disturbance over Yucatan, which forecasters have given a 40% chance of developing somewhere over the Persian Gulf.

“With that one would expect South, southwesterly winds on this track, 20, 30, 35 mph and rain that would accompany that,” Arnold said.

Experts from around the world were called in to help, including crane manufacturers and engineers and Thornton Tomasetti an engineering consulting firm that helped in the cleanup and recovery at Ground zero after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The long-term risk of further collapse means the indefinite closure of two major thoroughfares-Canal street and the intersecting Rampart street-along with tram lines and bus routes adjacent to the French quarter and business district.

The disaster was also the latest setback in efforts to revive a stretch of historic Canal Street that was economically moribund despite its proximity to the block. A popular new restaurant has opened on the block in recent years. And the buildings destroyed by fire across the street are being rebuilt into retail and residential projects.

The 18-story Hard Rock hotel is expected to be a major boost to this revival.

Now, due to the danger of further collapse, trading around the site has come crashing to a halt of indefinite duration.

Among the businesses in the danger zone was the Saenger theatre on the canal, a 1927 film and live performance Palace restored by the guardian to its flapper-era glory in 2013, eight years after it was badly flooded due to dam failures during hurricane Katrina. The touring version of the Broadway hits was a success in Saenger, but performances of “Wicked” that were due to run through this week have been canceled and the future of other productions is unclear.

Also closed is the Tony New Orleans Sports club, which was built on Rampart in the 1920s and boasted a celebrity guest list that over the years includes Tennessee Williams, johnny Weismuller and Govs. Hughie and Earl long. The facility emailed members that it had arranged for other fitness centers to accommodate their workouts during the closure.