Transcript: Mayor Adams Visits Site of Partial Building Collapse and Briefs Media

December 11, 2023

Mayor Eric Adams: Thank you. We're here in the Bronx and I'm joined by my local electeds in the area, Bronx Borough President Gibson, District Attorney Clark, Assemblywoman Tapia, Councilwoman Sanchez, and also my agency heads are here as well.

NYCEM Commissioner Iscol will give us an overview of what happened and where the residents are. FDNY Commissioner Kavanagh will give the actions we're taking place right now on the scene and what the procedures are. And DOB Commissioner Oddo will give the history of the building and if any open violations.

This incident took place approximately 3:30 p.m., there was a partial collapse of a residential building here in Morris Heights section of the Bronx. Our first responders responded immediately, and because of video observation we were able to have a preliminary review and communication with the owner of the store.

Our preliminary information with the owner of the store that everyone that was in the store is out at the time. And FDNY will give an overview of exactly where we are and if there are any other people we believe are caught in the rubble at all. So, I want to turn it over now to our NYCEM commissioner, Commissioner Iscol.

Commissioner Zachary Iscol, New York City Emergency Management: Thank you, sir. Thank you all for being out tonight. The building, we had a partial building collapse here at approximately 3:30 p.m. this afternoon. Fire Department units were on scene within a minute, 1:36 was their response time, and almost immediately we started the interagency process.

So, we brought out all of the utility companies to shut off power and gas to the building. We have Red Cross that is out here helping us to assist individuals. NYPD is on scene keeping everybody safe, cordoning off the area. Buildings, HPD is doing their preliminary investigations into the partial building collapse.

For residents of the building, we're directing them to a service center that we have set up at Public School 390 just up the block. We will have a service center there. We also have the MTA out here with four warming buses for residents who need it.

So, there's a real collective effort that's taking place out here to serve the needs of the people who live in this building and this community as we go through this process. But again, any residents that need a place to stay tonight, please go to PS 390. We will have teams there to help find you a place to stay for the duration of this event.

And now I'll turn it over to Commissioner Kavanagh who will discuss some of the search and rescue operations and life safety part of this operation. Thank you.

Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh: Thank you, Zach. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I think it's really important to enforce that this is an ongoing operation. So, our members behind me as we speak are still conducting search and rescue, and they will do so until we either find someone or confirm that there is no one under that rubble.

So, as Zach mentioned, our units were here in under two minutes, and all of our specialized training and resources that we have for an incident like this have gone to work. We have our drone up surveying the area seeing if we can find additional information about potential patients and areas of potential instability.

We have our K9 unit here helping us search for potential victims, and we have all of our specially trained firefighters, tactical units, collapse units and our EMTs and rescue medics who are trained specifically to treat someone in a collapse.

So, this is an ongoing operation. With that, I'd like to ask Chief Hodgens to add just a little bit to that. But this is going to be ongoing for a few hours until we find someone or confirm that there is no one.

Chief John Hodgens, Chief of Department, Fire Department: Good evening. As the commissioner stated, we arrived in one minute and 36 seconds. We immediately vacated, evacuated the building, got all the residents out and started to concentrate on the debris pile in front of the building, working that and trying to search for any victims.

We had dogs do searches and at this time, we are… You know, that is our main objective is to get to the bottom of that pile. We'll be here until we're down to the street level just to make sure if there are any victims under there, hopefully we can get to them in time. But it's an ongoing operation.

It's this type of operation we train for every day at our training facility. Our specialized units, we have a pile of debris at ‘The Rock’ and we train exactly under these conditions for this day that hopefully doesn't happen too often.

Commissioner James Oddo, Department of Buildings: This is a 1927 building and seven stories. Any building that's higher than six stories falls into the jurisdiction of our facade law in New York City. These folks, the owner of this building submitted their most recent report in March of '21. That report did find unsafe facade conditions, seven of them: mortar that was deteriorating, cracked bricks.

There is an active permit, a permit that's valid until next summer. Work was being done on this building as recently as a few days ago. I know you'll be interested in the history of the building in terms of violations. There are seven… Right now we see seven open violations, five ECB, two DOB. But they are not structural violations, it has to do with the sidewalk shed, the fact that it didn't have proper lighting, et cetera.

There are drawings that were submitted as part of the process to pull the permit that speaks to the part of the right lower corner that is collapsed, so obviously we'll take a strong look at that. Our engineers and our inspectors hope to be able, once given the green light for FDNY to get in the building and the second part of the H building to do an inspection and we'll have more answers after that.

Mayor Adams: Open to a few questions.

Question: Mayor, so we spoke with several of the residents today who are obviously [inaudible] actually saw someone drilling into the facade of the side of this building and then cracking and then a few seconds later the building starts to give way. Could you or the commissioner can speak to what that drilling might have been? And what more can you tell us about that quadrant of the building that you were specifically looking at drawings.

Commissioner Oddo: Can't tell you much more. Certainly can't speak to what the drilling is, don't know what it's about. Again, we're taking a look at the drawings that they submitted as part of the permit. And I want to be clear: unsafe facade conditions is not the same as an unsafe building.

But we are taking a good look at the paperwork, the drawings that they submitted, and we'll have some answers… As soon as we have answers, obviously, we'll share it with you.

Question: Was anybody working on the building today?

Commissioner Oddo: We don't believe that there were folks working on the facade work today. So far as of now we think the most recent work on the facade was several days ago.

Question: Can you give us a little more information on the search and rescue efforts?

Chief Hodgens: Yes. In the front of the building where the collapse is, there's a large debris pile. And we don't know if anybody's trapped under there, hopefully not. But what we're doing is we're tunneling into that debris pile as safely as we can. Firefighters right now are in a dangerous position. We don’t know what caused this corner of the building to come down and we don’t know if any more of it is going to come down. But we’re searching for life and that’s our main objective at this time.

Question: Someone who works at the bodega said that people were working on the sidewalk shed, do you know if that… Have you confirmed that and have those people been accounted for?

Chief Hodgens: I don't have any information on that work, so I can't really comment on that.

Question: About how long will you wait for reports of missing people before you determine that everything… Everyone is accounted for. What is the timetable [inaudible].

Chief Hodgens: There is no timetable. We will search the whole debris pile until every piece is picked up and we can see that the… Whether there's anybody there or not.