can people sue our family?

we started building (rebuilding) our house last year and it has been anything but easy. now the thing is that we have a huge basement (pre existing) and when we demolished the house the basement basically was like a big 7 feet hole in the ground.

now it’s monsoon and the thing is that it’s filling up with water and we cannot pump out the water because the area has a sewer issue and the water cannot be directed there. because of this the adjoining houses are at risk of collapsing over our basement and we are very worried as to what will happen. one neighbour is threatening legal action. can they really sue us? the map of the house was fully approved by mcd before construction.