Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Provides Update on Midtown Crane Accident

May 31, 2015

Mayor Bill de Blasio: …thank God, at this moment – no life threatening injuries. Our thoughts and prayers are with those injured. We have at this moment 10 reported injuries – non life-threatening – primarily pedestrians passing by – several injuries to construction workers as well. Thank God this incident occurred at an hour of the day, on a weekend where there not too many people around. And you'll hear some of the details about what happened physically that also minimized the damage.

But it's obviously a very serious incident. There's going to be a full investigation by Commissioner Chandler and the buildings department. Obviously, our first responders have taken charge of the situation. I want to thank the men and women of the NYPD, FDNY, OEM, and EMS – all of whom responded immediately, and took care of those who were injured. Obviously the surrounding streets were immediately closed off. We have a lot of personnel  here on the scene to deal with the situation. As [inaudible] we are blessed in this city to have an extraordinary response, and fast response from our first responders. The situation was quickly stabilized.

We, as I said, will do a full investigation to understand what happened here. We [inaudible] like this in the future. But the good news is that everything in this immediate area is now secure. We have set up a [inaudible] in the general area so the traffic is not flowing through. In the coming hours, as issues are addressed, we’ll open up some of the street, but obviously not the street right here where the incident occurred. That will be closed off today. It is our hope – we will work very hard to have Madison Avenue in front of the site opened up by the morning rush hour. That still remains to be seen, depending on the results we find in the investigation and the work that has to be done to make sure that everyone is safe.

With that, I want to thank all of the agencies that responded so well. I want to introduce the leaders of those agencies that are here, and then you will hear from them and they will be able to answer your questions. With us today, our buildings department commissioner, Rick Chandler; NYPD Chief of Patrol Carlos Gomez; FDNY Assistant Chief Ronald Spadafora; Chief of EMS James Booth; and the deputy commissioner of the Office of Emergency Management, Frank McCarton. I want to thank them all for their leadership. Commissioner – chief – does anyone want to add and then take the questions from the media so they could be updated on this [inaudible]

Thank you, everyone.

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