Transcript: Mayor Adams Briefs Media on Building Collapse in Lower Manhattan

April 18, 2023

Mayor Eric Adams: I just want to really give you an overview of what happened. We had a parking garage here that collapsed. Chief Esposito is the incident commander here and he's going to give an overview exactly what happened. I'm joined by the City Council member and the borough president that represent this area, as well as the police commissioner exactly to really respond to this incident. At this time we only have one DOA, but I do want to point out that thank God we had the robotic dog that was able to go in the building. This is ideally what we talk about, not sending a human being inside a building that's unstable.

We were also able to use the technology of a drone to give a real visualization of what is happening in this building. At this time, this building is completely unstable and the chief… We do not want to send in someone until we can make sure the building is shored up, but using the necessary technology, we are able to get a clear view of what's happening inside the building for the most part, and do whatever we can to see if there are any more victims. Right now, as I indicated, we have one confirmed DOA, and Chief Esposito will give you an overview of what else we have on the ground and what's taking place. Chief.

John Esposito, Chief of Operations, Fire Department: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good afternoon. I'm John Esposito, the chief of operations for the Fire Department. As far as we can tell so far, we have six patients. There were six workers in the building at the time of the collapse. Four of them have been transported to the hospital in stable condition. We have one patient that has died and we have one patient that refused medical attention. This was an extremely dangerous operation for our firefighters. We responded to a call of a collapse in the building. We had firefighters inside the building conducting searches. The building was continuing to collapse. We made the decision to remove all our people from the building.

Our robotics unit happened to be nearby. They were on scene very quickly. We deployed our robot dog into the building, they were able to give us a video inside, and then we were able to fly our drones inside to conduct an assessment and conduct searches. Although we continue to make sure that we have everybody accounted for, at this time, we believe that we have the workers that were in danger in the building all accounted for, all out of the building, and that structure is very unstable. We've had some parking garage, we've had some of the slabs, a couple of the concrete slab floors collapse, crush some of the cars that are inside, and this will be a prolonged operation. I'm going to pass it on to the police commissioner.

Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell: Hello. At this time we have no reason to believe that this is anything other than a structural collapse. Obviously, that investigation will continue. Our preliminary response centered on making this area safe, that includes traffic control and evacuating the nearby Pace University building, which was deemed unstable at that time. We will continue to work in collaboration with our partners in the Fire Department in this effort.

Acting Commissioner Kazimir Vilenchik, Department of Buildings: Good afternoon. So as indicated, it's a structural collapse at this moment, and what we observed from the drone deployed and we observed that there are four-story building all the way pancaked, collapsed all the way to the cellar floor. Our engineers deployed and currently checking adjoining buildings and observing footage from drone pictures to identify possible reason for collapse. We are going to continuous review and research property profiles to understand history of the building, certificate of occupancy, and all other records and I will update this information [inaudible].

Mayor Adams: Do you know if there are any active work permits or any violations?

Acting Commissioner Vilenchik: And at this time I should mention also there right now there are some active violation on the building dated back to 2003, but in 2010 was application filed which not indicated violation was corrected, but it was filed. There are some active permits in the building. One of them is related to the electrical work on the premise.

Question: [Inaudible.]

Mayor Adams: All of that will be part of our review. We didn't have any filed 311 complaints on the building. And as the acting commissioner of DOB indicated, it is always going to be part of the review exactly what happened here, if there was no open violations on the structure.

Question: I'm wondering if somebody might be able to answer [inaudible].

Acting Commissioner Vilenchik: Certificate of occupancy for this building was issued in 1957 to be used as a parking garage. It is a four story building with a cellar, all the way through is parking. We have some plans for work filed in 2010, it's the latest for installation of the lift, auto lift, but we currently review those plans and trying to find out what they can bring [inaudible].

Question: [Inaudible.]

Mayor Adams: Hold on, ma'am, we will call on you, but somebody be called on already. Okay? We don't want to be yelling out all over the place. We'll call on you. Go ahead, Myles.

Question: Can you tell us what Command Tactical was doing here and just operations, understand why you can't send people in?

Esposito: So our Command Tactical Unit, robotics unit, when they go with either the robot dog or the drones, they're able to stream the video directly to our phones, directly to our command center. We're able to share that. The great part of that is we're able to use the technology to get information and reconnaissance without putting our firefighters' lives and our first responders' lives at risk. Great advances in technology and we've used the dog before. This is the first time that we've been able to fly inside in a collapse to do this and try to get us some information, again without risking the lives of our firefighters.

Question: Chief, could you describe specific [inaudible]?

Esposito: Continuing to do searches. There are some cars in there that are crushed. We're trying to see if we can get up close to make sure that there's nobody in those cars, but as I said before, we believe that we have everybody accounted for. We've sent people to the hospitals to make sure that the people in the hospitals are people that are working here and are accounted for.

Question: [Inaudible] active parking?

Esposito: Active, we believe active parking lot. I'm not aware that there was any construction ongoing.

Question: [Inaudible.]

Esposito: Some of the hospitals, I'm not sure that we can get that for you.

Question: [Inaudible.]

Esposito: I'm not sure yet where all the injured was. There was a worker that was trapped on the upper floors. He was conscious and alert and moving around, calling us. He just couldn't get down and we were able to put firefighters up there in the building and take him out across the roof to another building and bring him down safely.

Question: On that note, can you give details of what these rescues entail [inaudible]?

Esposito: All of that I'm not sure of yet. I don't know that there were people that were trapped. I think they were just injured, with the exception of the one that we removed from the upper floors.

Question: [Inaudible.]

Esposito: I'm sorry?

Question: [Inaudible.]

Esposito: We're still evaluating that at this time.

Question: [Inaudible.]

Esposito: That's our thought right now, but we're still looking to confirm that.

Question: [Inaudible] just confirmed that there's nobody left [inaudible.]

Esposito: At this time, that's what we believe and we're still working to confirm that

Mayor Adams: This man here. This man right here, go ahead. Yes?

Question: [Inaudible.]

Mayor Adams: All part of the investigation that DOB is going to do.

Question: [Inaudible.]

Esposito: We're not sure until we confirm and DOB makes their assessment that it's all safe.

Question: And chief, [inaudible] the person in the front, was he a worker?

Esposito: Yes. He was a worker in the building.

Mayor Adams: Ma'am, we have a mechanism to let everybody when they can get back in their building. We'll make sure that you are able to get that information.

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