"At this time, we only have one DOA," Adams said."I do want to point out that thank God we had the robotic dog that was able to go in the building. This is ideally what we talk about - not sending a human being inside a building that was unstable. We were also able to use the technology of a drone to give a real visualization of what's happening in this building.
"This was an extremely dangerous operation for our firefighters. We responded to a call of a collapse in the building. We had firefighters inside the building conducting searches. The building was continuing to collapse. We made the decision to remove all our people from the building. Our robotics unit happened to be nearby. They were on scene very quickly. We deployed our robot dog into the building.
Esposito said the concrete slab floor crushed some cars inside when it collapsed. A Department of Buildings official said the interior floor"pancaked" when it collapsed. Building Collapse: Expect traffic delays & emergency personnel in area of Ann Street & Nassau Street, Manhattan. Avoid the area. Multilingual & ASL Link: