 Soundcheck 1-2. Soundcheck 1-2. This is good with this. Thank you Peter. Guys, if anybody's going live, we'll give you enough of a morning so you can go live, alright? That surrounds this building. These are put up when construction is being done on buildings. They are put up. They are removing it again. They've resumed that work. You see them removing their sheet of metal. They have been dropping planks of wood. Of course, the main question is how in the world did this building turn into a house of parts this afternoon and suddenly collapsed? We have new information from the fire department that all people have been evacuated from this partially collapsed building at 1915 Billingsley Terrace here in the Bronx. The building has 47 residential units and 6 businesses. The search for potential victims is ongoing, but their initial search did not turn up any victims. Again, the entire building has been evacuated. And you can see the work is ongoing at this hour. It is now close to 6 o'clock. Firefighters are standing ready to continue moving the debris out after these firefighters are finished up from the ladder tearing down the shed that surrounds this building. Billingsley Terrace here in the Bronx. It has 47 residential units, 6 businesses. All have been evacuated from this partially collapsed. We're coming to your picture. It's out here. Councilwoman Sanchez and also my agency heads are here as well. Nice information at this school to give us an overview of what happened and where the residents are. FNY Commissioner Kavanaugh will give you the answers. We're taking place right now on the scene and what the procedures are. And DOB Commissioner Otto will give you the history of the building and if any, open violation. This incident took place approximately at 3.30 p.m. There was a partially collapsed residential building there. In the modernized high section of the Bronx, our first responders responded immediately and because of video observation, we're able to have a preliminary review, the 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. Lefty and Y, we'll give you an overview of exactly where we are, if there are any other people who can leave according to the government's add-ons. So I want to turn it over now to our nice Commissioner Kavanaugh. Thank you, sir. Thank you all for being out here tonight. The building, we had a partial building collapse here at approximately 3.30 p.m. this afternoon. Fire departments were on scene within a minute, 36 was their response time, and almost immediately we started the intervention process. So we brought out all of the utility companies to shut off power and gas in the building. We have Red Cross that is out here helping us to assist individuals. And my PD is on the scene, keeping everybody safe before to name off the area. Buildings, HPD is doing their preliminary investigations into the partial building collapse. From residents of the building, we're directing them to the 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 MPA out here with four warning 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 PS390. We will have teams there to help find you a place to stay for your issue of this event. I'm now turned over to Commissioner Cavanaugh and we'll discuss some of the search and rescue operations of life safety and part of this operation. Thank you very much. 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 rumble. So as Zach mentioned, our units were here 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, serving the area, seeing if we can find additional information about potential patients and areas of potential instability. We have our canine unit here helping us search for potential victims. And we have all of our specially trained firefighters, tactical units, Blacks units, and our EMTs and rescue medics who are trained specifically to train someone in a go out. So this is an ongoing operation. It has chief cautions to add just a little bit to that. This is going to be ongoing for a few hours until we find someone working from there. As the commission has stated, we arrived in one minute and 36 seconds. We immediately vacated and 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 through searches and at this time we are, that is our main objective, is to get to the bottom of that pile. We'll be here until it's 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. This is a 1927 building with seven stories. Any building that's higher than six stories falls into the jurisdiction of Al Fasado in New York City. These folks, the owner of this building submitted their most recent report in March of 2021. 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 the 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 sweet 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, etc. 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. Obviously, we'll take a strong look at that. Our engineers and our inspectors hope to be able once given the green light from FDN light to get in the building and the second part of the each building to do an inspection and we'll have more answers after that. We have a few questions. Just let us know. Certainly can't speak to what the drill is 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. 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. We have other questions. You need to read your hand if you have any good questions. Yes, in front of the building where the building collapsed was a large debris pile. And we don't know if anybody is trapped under there. Hopefully not. But what we're doing is we're tunneling it to that debris pile as safely as we can. Firefighters right now are in a dangerous position. We don't know what course is for another building to come down. We don't know if any more of it's going to come down. But we're searching for life and that's our main objective at this time. We will search the whole debris pile until every piece is picked up and we can see whether there's anybody there. Exactly right about it. Grease high, firefighters have started walking on top of the pile again. All eyes are on this pile of debris. Why? Because they want to get to the bottom of all this debris. They are not going to rest, we heard from the news conference, until they get to street level. Until they see the sidewalk again. They know no one is inside the building. They have evacuated all the apartments. They have confirmed nobody is in the store. So all that is left, the mystery here is that mound of debris. Is there anyone underneath it? Their initial search did not turn up any clues of people under there. But they are not stopping. You see the firefighters down there removing this debris as carefully and as quickly as they can. They will not stop, we're told, until they get to the bottom of the rubble. Even if it means they are at somewhat risk to themselves. Because we don't know what caused the collapse. We don't know if more of the building will fall as well. But they have to make sure that there's no one underneath there. And Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanaugh spoke to this primary mission just a few minutes ago. Practice for this. How they have a mound of debris. They practice going through that. Learning how best to remove the debris. How not to hurt possible victims underneath. And this is what they strain for. And what you're seeing on your screens right now are heroes. Part of work. We're live in the Bronx. I'm Lucy. And for Channel 7, Eyewitness News. Truck, you see the truck at work there taking down the scaffolding. This mound, what's left for them to go through. You see the firefighters lined up in a perimeter around it. They're waiting for clearance for the green light to go back in and dig by hand. This is what all the firefighters focus. This is what their focus is on right now. They will not rest until they see the street, the sidewalk under this pile. They can confirm with their eyes there are no bodies underneath. We know that the entire building has been evacuated. 47 apartment units in this building. Six businesses. They have evacuated everyone. The preliminary search did not turn up any victims. But they are not resting until they clear all this debris as quickly, as safely as possible. We heard from the fire commissioner for Kavanaugh just a few minutes ago. Degree that they work on, they practice on, and they drill on. So that when there is a real life emergency, as we are seeing unfolding before our eyes right now, no one is startled by it. They know exactly what to do. They know the protocol. They know how to advance and how to do it quickly and how to do it safely. The million dollar question of course is why did the corner act like a house of cards? That is for investigators to tackle. Right now it is for firefighters to tackle this mound of debris and ensure they can see the bottom of it and determine that indeed no one is underneath. It is the image of heroes watching this scene unfold all evening. From this hand between the firefighters that work down there, we can see the truck screen. One fire truck was pulled back. A lot of trucks pulled back a little bit. Other bulldozers have come in in the last few minutes. We see the firefighters lined up on the side waiting to get on top of that debris pile again through the evening. We have seen them on the pile, on the pile, on the pile as they go through the rhythm of going through this pile keeping these firefighters at least as possible. On the fourth floor, we have seen them up as long as we can in view of all of the various levels of this building. You have to know that they are watching this to make sure there isn't further collapse. You have firefighters underneath this collapse around the side of the debris pile so they have to be very careful that there isn't a further structural collapse from this building. You see the floor there just dangling.