SEATTLE — Four people were killed after a construction crane fell from the top of a building in Seattle and crushed six vehicles on the street below, the authorities said.

The Seattle fire chief, Harold Scoggins, said in a news conference that two of the four people killed were crane operators and that the other two had been in separate vehicles. Four other people had non-life-threatening injuries, the Fire Department said.

A piece of the yellow crane was slashed across a seven-lane road on Saturday afternoon, with crime scene tape cordoning off an area about five blocks long. At least one car was still crushed beneath the wreckage, a jarring contrast to the boxy glass and precise corners of the tech and research buildings common in the surrounding South Lake Union neighborhood.