What could have caused the Brooklyn building collapse?

Welcome back. We are on the other side of our newsroom this morning and Francis, we wanted to answer some questions this morning about work at the construction site. I know you've been able to dig in a little deeper at the Department of Buildings website. What have you found about this? Yeah, well, this is something that prompted us to look not only because Of course, neighbors have questions, and a lot of people we spoke with at the scene talked about their concerns over the construction. But also, this is just something we usually do in a situation like this. So we looked into the records with the Department of Buildings with both the construction site, the development, as well as the building that collapsed. Now, when you look at the building that collapsed, the three-story building, there's not any sort of violations. But if you look into the construction next to it, here you see a stop work order existed. That we already knew and had been reporting all morning. Okay. Once I spent some time digging deeper through all of the filings, and there are a lot. I then found this document that caught my attention, a pre-construction building survey. So essentially an inspection into the surrounding buildings of this development. So not the building that collapsed, but on the other side of what they were going to create, they did a survey and that's what this shows right here. Is that right? Yes, but it linked to the building collapse and that's what's so interesting. So here you actually see photos of the building that collapsed, listed to that address, 1321 Flatbush Avenue, the North Facade. In this report, it details... Now, They haven't determined the link exactly, but we're looking again into the court filings or the city filings rather and trying to put together a bigger picture of what might have happened here. And so when we talk about that work order, a lot of people have focused on that because that happened back in March and it was not. Properly protecting neighboring buildings, which my understanding is could be something as simple as a fence that's not high enough, but it could be a little bit more serious than that. Do we have any more sort of information about what that could have been or what that was about? Yeah, as you mentioned, it could be little details from the netting to the roofing. It's not clear here, but we do know that the work order was issued in March. They were issued another violation because demolition was still continuing in April. They then proceeded to fix all the problems. They paid the $10,000 penalty and that work order was lifted. Okay. And so we do have a piece of sound that I do want to play here. This is from the building commissioner who spoke last night outside of the scene itself. And that gives insight into what was going on at the construction site when the collapse happened. Okay. So let's take a listen. 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. So essentially what he's saying is there were approved for a three story building, but there were plans for a nine story building. So a lot of people are speculating, were they making some preparations for that nine story building? And perhaps that is something that could have created this sort of situation that we're looking at. You don't want to speculate, but that is something that people are talking about right now, right? And industry experts that some of our crews have spoken with have said that's often the procedure with some of these buildings, where they get approval for perhaps a three-story building, and then they go ahead and try to get the approval for something greater, such as a nine-story building. All right. And we talked to the former commissioner of building in New York. He's right here, Mr. Landini. So let's take a listen here. Some passing showers early this morning. So that's not going to be the right one. All right. So we do know that there is a lot that's at stake. So we do have some audience questions here. Do we... Know who the general contractor is. It's a company that has not responded yet to some of our inquiries, right? And as people who have been in any sort of contractor project knows, there's different parties involved from the contractors to the developers. We've reached out to all parties involved, but we haven't heard back yet. And the next question that we have here, and we do encourage anyone who's watching to scan the QR code that's on your screen. We do want to have you as a part of our conversation. Sometimes we do have reporters like Francis who are here who can answer these questions for us. So the next question, what is... What is the potential for toxic fumes? I don't know if you can answer that, but it seems like... No, I saw a lot of concern with that. People were wondering if the first responders should be wearing masks or any sort of protective gear. Saw some of them wearing masks up there, the NYPD officers were there. And unfortunately, that is often a concern. I haven't heard anything about that presenting a problem in this specific case. But as we've seen with previous building collapse, that is often an issue for some of the first responders. And just as we wrap up here, do we know sort of what happens next with the investigation? Is it just a matter of making sure that the surrounding buildings are OK first and then they have to look a little deeper at the plans and what was done and maybe anything on that particular day? Was there anything on that particular day that was out of the ordinary? That seems like that's so as of right now, a full stop work order has been issued, which. Makes a lot of sense. They want to investigate and inspect the surrounding buildings and the structural integrity. As for what's next, I have reached out to the Department of Buildings to see exactly why this maybe wasn't a violation. The wall that was marked as poor with visible cracks, I've reached out to them to see if we can get any clarity on that. But again, the full stop work order has been issued, and now we're awaiting to see what the actual cause is. All right, Frances Wang, thank you very much, and thank you for the explanation. I know we don't normally do things on the computer, but you said, look, this is going to be easier for me to explain to you if I just show you how I got to this information. And often we show people the results, but we don't really show the process and how we get those results.