FDNY: Three-story building collapses, killing 1

Okay, right back to breaking news coverage from our partners at Fox 5 New York as they continue to cover the search and rescue efforts after that partial building collapse. Basically, a three-story apartment building all below the firefighters you're looking at right now, right? Yeah, it's probably... Probably, um... Beyond that wall that we're talking about, that tan wall, back behind there is where most of the building that you don't see anymore is behind. And it fell into the hole where they were doing the construction. And right now, like I said about the void, the void is there. You know, and they're trying to see if, you know, they must know somebody who is there to at least make some noise, and they're trying to bring out, hopefully, that the person is still Stable that they could get it out and get some medical attention. You know, Jim, it's interesting, too, at the very top left part of the shot there from the chopper on the right side, you can see what you were talking about a little bit about, you know, shoring up that spot where they, you know, we seen the picture from Google Images or whatever from 2026. This was, you know, a hole in the ground, presumably getting ready to build up some, you know, new apartment building or something like that. You can see where they had sort of barricaded off the lot. Right, and the picture that I'm looking at right now where you can see into the apartment, you can see part of the wall that separated from the building. It's just leaning out a little bit. It's still there, the back of that building that didn't collapse. You can see that wall. That is a party wall sharing with the building where you can look into and the building that's not there. Yeah. It's alarming how close these construction projects happen to the buildings. I mean, it is a story of New York. That's what we're seeing on almost every block. Mm-hmm. It's just, you know, I wonder how something like this can happen where, you know, they pull something out and the entire building collapse. Talk about just how delicate of a situation is with these construction projects and to make sure that, you know, no one gets, no one is in those buildings right next to it. Yeah, well, the, you know, right now, all the buildings in the area must be fully evacuated. They don't want any other further collapse that could injure more people. So they got the people are out. And then now I can see they're doing a lot with buckets now. They're trying to get, you know, the smaller debris out, fill up with the buckets, pass the buckets on and get rid of them. You know, they need, I don't know, we can't see where that, but there must be a victim in there because that's where they're so concentrated. They would have been spread out a little bit more looking for a victim. I think they have somebody that they can reach, and they're trying to reach it now. Yeah, you know, and when we take a look at, you know, that Google image on the left there, I mean, the building, you can see the building that did collapse, and we can see the other ones next to it. It'll look very similar. I mean, how much risk do you think those other buildings are if we see the one in the image we're looking at right now right off to the, you know, the center of the right there of your screen? If that one just fell, what about the other buildings that don't look much different from it? Well, right now it's evacuated, and they'll evaluate it once they have more time. But right now it looks stable enough that they could, you know, do the work that they're doing. They're one building away from the building you're talking about, you know. So it's pretty stable now, but they're going to check it. you know that's these two three-story buildings they're going to check it one's gone that we're seeing now and the other one is still there and uh they're going to check it later but it's stable enough that they feel comfortable at the same time when we're looking at these tower ladders their tower ladders the people in the towers are watching these other buildings make sure there's no shift of anything yeah you know they actually use a surveyor to shoot the point to actually aim and And I can see if that building moves even an inch. You can see them from above right there on that ladder, just kind of monitoring that whole situation just because of just how... Again, the DOB is there on site also checking the structural integrity of everything too. Jim, we want to keep you on the line. We want to acknowledge also that we're about to start our 6 o'clock news. And at this time, we'd like to go up to Dan Rice, who is live over the scene. This is a building collapse in Flatbush, Brooklyn. One person has died, several injured. Dan, can you give us the latest of what you're seeing since the last time we checked in with you? And it looks like these firefighters are up against the clock here to find. Find someone in this rubble. This all happened around four o'clock this afternoon so they're now at the two hour mark trying to get any uh people who may be under that debris out of the debris and again for I would believe it's been about a half an hour half an hour now we've been watching them concentrate on this one area you see some of the tools being moved away they did have a saw trying to cut away more of that uh wood that you see the one firefighter sitting on uh towards the top of your picture there again it's this area that we've seen the backboard Board going over there. There's a stretcher that the backboard would go on on top of that debris as well. So it would appear that this is where they believe somebody may be. You see on the top of your picture the NYPD out there pulling debris from behind the plywood as well, trying to make as clear a path as possible to be able to get somebody out from underneath that building. We talked about the bucket brigade before where they're taking all the smaller debris and just handing it in buckets. You see a bucket being moved now from firefighter to firefighter to try to get as much of the area cleared as possible as they try to rescue what appears to be Somebody underneath that area of the collapsed wall. I will bring the camera out a little bit here to give you a better idea of just how big this operation is. It appears you do have a stretcher. You can't see it now. It's on the bottom of your screen, though. They're on the street side. So if they do get somebody out from that hole, they'll have to bring that stretcher to the street side to get them to an ambulance. But again, a lot of the pace down here has not changed over the last hour. The firefighters, the police officers. Officers, the EMS folks, have not slowed down trying to get underneath that debris as they try to get to what we believe somebody may still be under there. We did see a K-9 unit, a rescue dog being walked around the scene as well. We did police aviation. We saw a drone overhead. So a very detailed operation down here as they try to look for more victims of this building collapse. Yeah, you know, it is a delicate job. As we sort of gather more information, learn more, figure out exactly what went wrong, Now that we know that That it was a building that collapsed into the construction site. It does appear that the worst place to be for the workers, the people who were injured, we know there's one dead, ten others with various forms of injuries being treated, some life-threatening, some non-life-threatening. But it does seem like it would have been the middle of that construction zone was the worst place to be because that's where the top of the building next door toppled. It looks like they're trying to find people who are right next to that collapsed building. And maybe, as we kept hearing the former fire department officials say, there's that void right next to where the building toppled, where maybe there's some space and people are just trapped down there, but still alive, probably injured. But it does seem like maybe being closest to that site of the collapse somehow gave them a little bit of protection from the tumbling debris that people further off into the middle of the construction site didn't have. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. You can see on top of your video there where the blue helmets are. It kind of created that triangular void, if you will. Where people may have been safe as everything came down because this whole site is encompassed by a plywood wall. Look at the top left of your screen down up there. You can see where that plywood wall would come around and angles down right in line with where the plywood that we see the firefighters sitting would have been lined up. So if some of that supporting wall collapsed, this may have just slid down, creating that void, trapping other people underneath of it. But again, we'll see hopefully in a few minutes if they're able to. rescue anybody from underneath that debris