FULL: Brooklyn building collapse update

At 1 p.m., the FDNY received a 911 call of a three-story building collapse here on Flatbush at 1321 Flatbush Avenue. The FDNY responded within one minute and immediately started search and rescue operations. I am heartbroken to share that at this time, at least two New Yorkers have passed away. More than ten New Yorkers have been transported to local hospitals with both critical and non-life-threatening injuries. I want to ask New Yorkers to please take a moment to pray for those who passed away today and all of those who are mourning their loss, as well as for a fast and full recovery for all those who were injured. We will continue to update New Yorkers with more information as we have it. I want to thank our city's first responders for their quick and professional response. This has been an incredibly challenging and fast-moving situation with precarious wreckage to navigate and dangerous voids beneath the surface. This type of rescue is exactly what the FDNY trains for. 250 firefighters and EMS personnel responded and have worked tirelessly to secure the scene and rescue those who were trapped. And I want to thank every other agency who has contributed to this whole-of-government response. In addition to the FDNY, NYSEM, the NYPD, DOB, and HPD are all on site. And we are grateful for the support from both utility providers and the Red Cross who are also on site. NYSEM and the Red Cross have opened a reception center for impacted and displaced residents at the Flatbush YMCA at 1401 Flatbush Avenue. And as emergency services respond, Flatbush Avenue is closed from Clarendon Avenue to Bedford Avenue. We ask New Yorkers to continue to avoid the area so that rescue teams can get here to the scene and do their work. DOB and our law enforcement partners will be leading an investigation into the cause of this building collapse. As soon as we have more information on this, we will share it directly with New Yorkers. This was a devastating collapse. We know that it affects the lives of many New Yorkers who live here on Flatbush. As we rebuild, the city of New York will stand alongside those impacted at every step of the way. Thank you, and now I will pass it over to our FDNY Commissioner, Lillian Bonsignor. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good evening. This afternoon at approximately 4.01 p.m., a call came in for a collapse at 1321 Flatbush Avenue here in Brooklyn. This was a major technical response at a three-story multiple dwelling that collapsed into an adjacent construction site. Multiple people from the building and the construction site were trapped. Fire and EMS units responded within one minute, and more than 250 firefighters and EMS personnel are currently operating on scene. In coordination with NYPD, NYSEM, the Department of Buildings, the Red Cross, HPD, and our utility companies. We have been working for hours to do all we can to help anyone who may have been injured in this collapse. We do not know how many people are still in the collapse zone, and this will be a prolonged operation. Its cause is under investigation. Currently, and this is subject to change. We have 19 patients, 19 patients, sadly, we have two that are deceased, four that are critical, 12 that are stable, and we also have one firefighter with minor injuries. Of those 19, seven are children. We won't be talking about their ages at this moment. We expect that there could be more people as this operation progresses. The units are performing dangerous and heroic work. Thanks to social media and our local news, I know there is already a tremendous amount of video of the rescue efforts performed by our firefighters and rescue paramedics and fellow first responders. They encountered dangerous and perilous conditions, working as teams to remove debris carefully as to not injure the patients or themselves. Collapse operations are extremely dangerous because, as you know, the risk of disrupting the piles by moving too quickly, that can have a detrimental consequence. Every move is choreographed and critically important to patient outcomes and member safety. They have been working methodically and have not stopped since they arrived here this afternoon. Our K-9 unit is also on the scene and they are working the pile alongside of NYPD's K-9 unit. This is why we train on these types of incidents so often, to ensure that the medics and the firefighters who are tasked with entering these unstable and dangerous collapse zones know exactly what to expect and how to get this job done. I cannot thank our firefighters and our rescue medics enough for the tremendous job that they're doing here tonight, working carefully in coordinated efforts to keep calm, make smart decisions, and protect themselves and their patients To get them medical treatment, even as they are trying to get them out of the collapse zone safely. It is inspiring and intricate work, and I commend our teams for a job well done. We know that we're not finished here, and we'll likely not be finished for quite some time. In the meantime, we send our thoughts and our prayers to all of those affected by this collapse, and to the members of our commands, all of our commands... For their continued safety in this very dangerous operation, I'd like to introduce our chief of department, John Esposito, to talk about the operation details. Thank you, Commissioner. We arrived on scene less than one minute after the collapse. One of our fire companies was in the neighborhood, returning from another emergency, and they drove upon the scene. They encountered people trapped in the adjacent building that was part of the collapse. They immediately took action and removed those people from danger. We have the complete collapse of a three-story multiple dwelling into the construction site excavation next door. We have... Enacted our collapse rescue plan, we have searched and continue to search any void spaces looking for any victims and we've removed a few from that collapse area. We've removed everybody and we're using our dogs, the FDNY dogs and the NYPD dogs. To see if there's any additional places to search, if they identify that, we will search those areas, and then we will commence our selected debris removal as we remove all of that pile to get down to the dirt and search and remove any additional victims. As the Commissioner said, this is an extremely dangerous operation for all of our people. It's a very unstable situation. Thank you very much. Adjoining building that remains partially intact is always a danger. Hi, I'm Andrew. Our main concern is a secondary collapse. We've taken measures to keep an eye on that and try to ensure that there is no further collapse, and we will be here for several days until this entire site is searched for all potential victims. That's all part of the investigation that we'll find out. We know that there was work going on. There were construction workers actively working when the collapse occurred. Just give me one second. If we could have the DOB commissioner come up. The type of work they were conducting was excavation work on that job site. And so that was what they were working on today. They have a plan approved for a three-story building, but they have current plans looking for a nine-story building, which has not yet been approved for. At this point, all we have at this time is excavation work in that section of the construction. Thank you very much. Yes, they were digging down. We do not know how many people from the occupied multiple dwelling are missing. We're investigating, trying to determine that. We do not know how many people are missing overall. There's a few things we want to underline here, and then I'm going to pass it over to our commissioner. One is that it's a fast-moving situation, and the numbers may change as the work continues. The two that have been deceased, and I said to your first question, more than 10 New Yorkers have been hospitalized, some with critical life-threatening injuries, others with non-life-threatening injuries. I'll have the commissioner just add the additional details. That is correct. The fact that we're here during this operation is still ongoing. This is going to be a very fast-moving, very dynamic situation. So, yes, more than 10 were hospitalized. By the time I got here, the most updated number was 19, which we offered you. It will likely change, and it will change by the minute sometimes. So as far as the two that are deceased, we're not saying whether they were adults or children. We're just saying there were two deceased at this moment. Because this is such a very fragile situation here. And we really don't know how many people were in those buildings, was in this building when it collapsed. So as the chief said, we'll continue to look until we find everybody. And we work in collaboration with NYPD to see if there's any missing reports. We all work together to try to determine how many people are still to be found.