Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Sources: One Dead In Chopper Crash On Top Of Manhattan Building; 100 Fire And EMS Units Respond To Manhattan Chopper Crash; Rain, Low Visibility Could Have Contributed To Chopper Crash; Witnesses Describe Scene Inside Manhattan Building. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired June 10, 2019 - 14:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


[14:30:00] BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: If you are just joining us, there has been a forced helicopter landing on top of one of the buildings in midtown Manhattan. This is just a couple of blocks shy of Central Park, at 7th Avenue and 51st Street. We don't the conditions on which this helicopter had to crash land. That's how we just heard it from the governor.

It started a fire. People in the building heard the shake. Apparently, the fire is under control. As Brynn was just reporting, there's one confirmed fatality and we also have one confirmed injured. It's still early going. That's what we know.

More than 100 fire personnel have rushed to the scene trying to get a handle on any sort of injuries from anyone else in the building or in the surrounding area.

Tom Sater is up for me live. He's our meteorologist, who can talk us through a little bit about the conditions.

Just listening to Miles O'Brien, and he's right, it's a low ceiling. Poor visibility. It's one of those days in New York City where you can't even see the Freedom Tower, the top of the Empire State Building.

TOM SATER, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Right.

BALDWIN: So, there you go.

SATER: Brooke, I'm not a pilot. So the decision making, what is the threshold when it comes to weather to decide to take flight or not?

We have a visibility at a mile and a quarter right now with a low cloud deck. That does pose a problem. We've got an east wind that's at nine miles per hour. But, Brooke, we're seeing gusts of 25.

Toss in the rainfall, which generally has been light. We've had some moderate downpours. But nothing of the severity like the storms we had in Dallas yesterday with the crane collapse.

Toss all of these in the equation, the low visibility, the cloud deck and more to come.

I can tell you that the New York metro airports, LaGuardia, JFK, Newark and Teterboro all have delays right now for their passengers from an hour, hour and a half. And that's without just the volume. Of course, this is just weather. So obviously, what is the threshold for them to make that decision to take flight?

We will see more rain in the area across Long Island. Starting to see the colors of green. That's getting into a little bit of a heavier downpour. It's not dramatic. It's not monsoon rains. But it is in blue light. It's just very light.

But that all plays a role in the visibility and low cloud deck. Obviously, it's going to be something they're going to be watching. We have the hour, hour and a half delays at the airports around the region.

BALDWIN: Tom, thank you so much.

SATER: You're welcome.

BALDWIN: Tom Sater, on the conditions of the New York weather as we cover this helicopter crash landing.

Shimon is back up with me.

Shimon, talk to me about it. We see the flashing lights, NYPD, fire. Talk to me about the response. Who's down there?

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME & JUSTICE REPORTER: It's a massive response. When the call initially came into the NYPD through the 911 system and the fire department, they didn't know what they were dealing with. There was thought that maybe this was a plane or small plane that went in this building. So there was a massive response.

Hundreds of firefighters on the scene. Dozens of emergency services officers. These are the highly trained officers with the NYPD who can go to the building. They could do rope rescues and all sorts of things. They were mobilizing thinking this was going to be far worse.

At this point, they do believe there's only one person that's been hurt. That person we're told is now deceased. They are not 100 percent certain that there aren't other people on the helicopter, so they're going through that now to try and make sure no one else was injured or that no one else has died on this helicopter.

Again, the big question is, what was this helicopter doing over midtown? Was this a sightseeing type helicopter? Or was this -- what you do see a lot in Times Square are helicopters chartered to take photos. Sometimes to shoot film, to shoot for movies. You see that a lot in Times Square. It's not clear if that's what this helicopter was doing over Times Square.

Perhaps it was going somewhere else and it was looking for a space to land to try and -- the helicopter probably assumed it was going down and was just looking for a space to land without hurting anyone on the ground.

And I think that's what was important here. They found the space. Perhaps landed. It was a hard landing, a crash landing. Now we have at least one person dead.

The NYPD is continuing to respond. They're there on scene. We're going to have an extended operation that's going to go on for quite some time.

The good news is, at least they believe, the NYPD and the fire department, that they now have this under control.

BALDWIN: Shimon, thank you so much.

Let's head to midtown Manhattan. I have Miguel Marquez live on the scene at 7th and 5th Street.

You're on the phone for me for now, Miguel. What do you know?

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (via telephone): Look, it's pandemonium here. This is -- it's the worst of this seems to be over, but there's going to be a long process of figuring out what happened.

This is a helicopter. The governor was just out here, Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, and said a helicopter crashed. It's not clear if this was a hard landing, a controlled landing. They didn't call out an emergency. He says that there are either injured and/or dead in the helicopter. It's not clear how many at this point.

[14:35:10] The crash or whatever happened when it came down on top of this building caused a fire in the building that the fire department is confident it now has under control. But there are multiple, dozens of fire vehicles up and down 7th Avenue right now with an enormous number of not only NYPD, Fire, New York State Police as well trying to make sure that there's nothing beyond this.

And as the governor said, we all have 9/11 PTSD. When you hear something like this, a plane into a building, it just sends shivers. I think everybody went into offensive mode to figure out what was happening and whether or not it was going to be any worse and if others were in need and needed to be saved. Right now, it appears the worst is over.

I'm looking up at this building right now. You would not know anything is happening on top of the building. It's a rainy day in New York. You can barely see the top of the building. It's gray up there. There doesn't appear to be any smoke. No fire coming off the top of the building. And most of it seems to be a controlled operation at this point -- Brooke?

BALDWIN: That's what I was wondering. We're talking so much about - obviously, a ton of questions. Why was the helicopter flying? How many people were in the helicopter?

I am wondering about the people who the governor described as being in the building and feeling the building shake. How big is the building? Can you by looking up at it estimate how many floors?

MARQUEZ: Yes. This is probably a 60 to 70-floor building. It's one of two of three on this block. It's the tallest building on this block.

It's also not clear whether there was a helicopter pad on this building. A lot of buildings have helicopter pads. Perhaps it was an emergency landing and just tried to land it on the closest pad and didn't quite make it.

It is very poor flying conditions for any sort of aircraft right now. And certainly, a helicopter having issues over Manhattan would have been quite a scare.

BALDWIN: Since you're there, are you seeing any pieces of debris, parts of the helicopter anywhere on the streets below?

MARQUEZ: There's literally -- this is the shocking thing to me. I rushed over here a few blocks away from work. I expected to see something, something more substantial or telling of what happened there. But right now, there's nothing so far that I can see. I mean, our view is somewhat limited up 7th Avenue essentially, but all I see are fire vehicles, ambulances and the like, and a lot of police vehicles.

But so far there seems to be -- if something did happen on this roof, it appears that it was controlled enough that all of it stayed on the roof with the exception of a fire in the building that the fire department was able to get ahold of quickly.

BALDWIN: OK. We just confirmed, from Shimon, it is a 51-floor building, so your guess was correct.

Miguel Marquez pointing out, not seeing, at least from his vantage, any debris. Hopefully, this is contained.

You know, as we were listening to the governor, this helicopter for whatever reason had to -- had a forced or crash landing on top of this 51-story building, and it caused a fire. We're hearing from New York Fire that the fire is contained. The question is, how many people might have been injured or worse?

I've got Brynn Gingras.

Miguel, thank you for now.

I have Brynn back with me.

You were the one who confirmed one fatality. That was, we knew somebody was injured. Now we know that's a death. What more do you have?

BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, here's the big question authorities are asking is, where did this helicopter come from.

BALDWIN: Yes.

GINGRAS: Shimon brought it up. There's helicopters chartered to take pictures. Today wouldn't be the best day for that. There's helicopters for sightseeing around Manhattan. And the reason it's raising so much suspicions, to our sources really,

is that it's really in the middle of sort of that upper part of midtown, near Central Park.

BALDWIN: Yes.

GINGRAS: Typically, when sightseeing helicopters are allowed to go out, they're not allowed to cut through the middle of the city. It's not customary. They stay out of that area. They make a loop around, see the Statue of Liberty and different parts of the city.

BALDWIN: Sure.

GINGRAS: So that's the big question. That makes you wonder, again, what kind of helicopter is this. And typically, if it's a sightseeing, it's going to be more than one person. You have a pilot and people on board. If it's chartered, same thing. That's going to answer a lot of questions.

Of course, we also heard Shimon talk about how people are racing up to the roof trying to get the questions answered. They're look for the tail of the helicopter and figure out the flight path. There are cameras all around the city.

BALDWIN: Yes.

GINGRAS: So, of course, they can track that from the moment it took off to the moment it landed on the building.

So those are the big questions being raised right now. Unfortunately, we only know that one person died. It's a horrible accident. Is there more, is going to be the question.

[14:40:01] BALDWIN: You laid it out perfectly.

Stay with me.

We have a little more color from one of our affiliates, a local reporter just on the scene moments ago. Let's watch this together.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Right now, I'm trying to talk to people working in the building when this happened and were evacuated. I talked to one gentleman working on the 7th floor. This is about a 54- story building. He was on the 7th floor. He did not hear a thing. He didn't hear -- he heard the fire alarms going off and realized he needed to evacuate. He only found out what happened after he got out and started talking to co-workers.

Conversely, we talked to someone who was working much higher up. He thought it was an earthquake. He was thinking this was the worst. And then they started to evacuate. People were calm for the most part. When he got out here, he found out what happened. He is safe and his co-workers are seemingly safe. We mention that one fatality, which appears to be the pilot. I think

we had sound from earlier from one of the workers in the building. If so, now would be a good time to play it.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: What floor were you on?

UNIDENTIFIED WITNESS: Thirty-eighth floor.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Thirtieth?

UNIDENTIFIED WITNESS: Thirty-eighth.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Thirty-eighth? What did you feel?

UNIDENTIFIED WITNESS: Just the building shook.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Did you hear anything?

UNIDENTIFIED WITNESS: It sounded like a small engine plane at first, and then I just felt it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: All right. So you heard the gentleman interviewed. He was on the 38th floor of this 51-story building in midtown Manhattan. He said the entire building shook.

If you are just joining us, we've been following this breaking story of this helicopter that, for whatever reason, and that is TBD, had to crash land on top of this huge building in the middle-midtown Manhattan. As a result of this forced landing, there was a fire on top of the building. This is according to governor and police. The fire has been contained.

You can see by the pictures. It's been pouring rain. The ceiling is low. Low visibility in the city. One of the huge questions was, why was a helicopter flying? Whose helicopter was it? And how many were in the helicopter?

We know we can confirm one death. And we don't know anything much beyond that.

Miguel Marquez is on the scene. We've got him in front of a camera.

Miguel, show us what you're seeing and tell us what you've been reporting out.

MARQUEZ (on camera): I want to show you the building. This is 7th Avenue looking up town, 7th Avenue. You can see the large number of energy vehicles up here. And if you look to the right, this is the building, 51 stories high. You can just make out the top of it now. There's no obvious damage to the building or smoke coming off of it. That may be because it is just such a cloudy day right now.

I want to jump in here. There's a gentleman here who was at work when all of this happened. And I want to chat with him quickly. NATHAN HUTTON, WITNESS: -- when it happened to five minutes after

2:00. It took a half hour to get from the 29th floor down to the ground floor. There were just too many people. It was too crowded. And everybody was trying to get off on all the floors at the same time.

MARQUEZ: Sir, when this incident happened, what did you feel? What did you hear?

HUTTON: You could feel the building shake, and you could actually hear the alarms when they went off. The alarms went off. Security came in. Told us, everybody, get out of the building now. Do not take the elevators. Walk down the stairs.

We could feel it when it hit, but no one knew what it was. We thought, like years ago, when they had an earthquake and you felt the buildings here in Manhattan shake, we thought that might have happened again. But when they said that a helicopter hit, we thought, a helicopter?

MARQUEZ: You were on the 29th floor? Did you smell smoke? Did you see fire?

HUTTON: Only coming down the staircase. You could smell it coming down the staircase because that staircase is like one big shaft, a vent. You could smell the smoke. Not thick, but you knew that there was smoke.

MARQUEZ: Did it smell like fuel?

HUTTON: It smelled like -- it smelled like construction material that was on fire or burning. That is the smell you smelled.

MARQUEZ: All of your colleagues, everybody you know make it out all right?

HUTTON: That was what I was just checking to make sure everybody on -- everybody in my department, everybody on my floor did get out of the building. But there were a lot of people that were still on the way out when we got downstairs. So there are a lot of upper floors up there.

MARQUEZ: Given the history of September 11th, 2001, what was it like when you felt it and the confusion there?

[14:45:05] HUTTON: Well, a lot of people felt the building shake. At first, they didn't think a lot of it. When security said, get out of the building, then you got a little nervous. Then you started thinking, staircase? Do I want to be coming down a staircase if there's something bad that's happening? We had no choice. We all got out. Everybody was somewhat calm but they we were nervous because that thought is in the back of your mind.

MARQUEZ: May I have your name?

HUTTON: My name is -- my name is Nathan Hutton. MARQUEZ: H-U-T-T-O-N?

HUTTON: O-N, yes.

MARQUEZ: You're on the 29th floor? What do you do there?

HUTTON: I work in BNP. I work in the I.T. Department.

MARQUEZ: And you're OK?

HUTTON: Oh, yes. I'm fine.

MARQUEZ: Thank you very much.

(CROSSTALK)

MARQUEZ: Just one story of the many that we will hear in the days ahead from this.

Let me show you again what this looks like. You go all the way to the top of the building, if you can. Still no indication of what Mr. Hutton was talking about. He was about a little over halfway up the building and said he felt it -- he felt that helicopter crash into the building.

But from at least this side of it, perhaps on the other side of the building you can see more. On this side, there's no indication of any sort of emergency in this building.

But a lot of people I think breathing easier right now. But still the governor said there was injuries and/or fatalities in that helicopter. So whether it was a corporate helicopter ferrying someone across town, a news helicopter or the many helicopters that fly around New York on any given day, we're yet to find out -- Brooke?

BALDWIN: Miguel, thank you so much. And thank Mr. Hutton for us as well.

From your vantage, you're not seeing a lot of smoke. As we look at the pictures from an affiliate in the city, that looks like smoke coming off the top of the building. The weather has been nasty and the visibility has been poor. That looks like plumes of smoke coming off of this 51-story building in midtown Manhattan.

And that explains the incredible -- the word Miguel used was "pandemonium." The presence, right, the fire and police. As we've been reporting, one fatality.

And trying to wrap our heads around why a helicopter would have been flying. How many people would have been in the helicopter and if anyone was injured even in the building.

Brynn Gingras has been sitting here with me. She's been working on getting us new information.

You have more on the death? GINGRAS: Yes. We have more. We have confirmed that a fatality is

the pilot. However, we have to be clear, because we're not sure if the pilot being killed in this crash is separate from the fatality we just reported.

BALDWIN: Got it.

GINGRAS: So is it two people who were killed, is it one? That's what we're trying to clarify. But we know that the pilot was killed in this crash.

And you're mentioning that video, and you brought it to my attention as Miguel was talking. This is an eerie sight.

BALDWIN: Right.

GINGRAS: That's exactly what authorities raced to when they got this call just before 2:00. They, at first, were told that it was a plane that crashed into a building. And as the governor said, PTSD right away.

BALDWIN: PTSD.

GINGRAS: There was almost a sigh of relief, in a way, when they learned it was not as serious. Just bring it down a notch.

BALDWIN: Thinking of 9/11. Of course.

GINGRAS: Certainly very serious.

BALDWIN: Of course.

GINGRAS: So we know at least one person was killed.

BALDWIN: All right.

Brynn, thank you very much.

Let's go back down to the scene to Miguel Marquez. He has another eyewitness for us -- Miguel?

MARQUEZ: We have Morgan Aries here. He was on the 14th floor of this building.

Is that correct, sir?

MORGAN ARIES, WITNESS: Yes.

MARQUEZ: How are you doing? A little shaken, I take it?

ARIES: A little shaky at this point. At least now we got some clarity as to what happened.

MARQUEZ: What were you in the middle of and what happened?

ARIES: I work on the 14th floor. I commute every day I'm here. We were all in our chairs, and we felt a little bit of a tremor. We were like, wow, that's something that's unusual. That doesn't normally happen. And sure enough, about 10 minutes later, five, 10 minutes later, we heard the loudspeaker. The guy reported we need to evacuate immediately.

The first report we got was that we needed to stay in our seats and just remain --

MARQUEZ: Stay in your seats?

ARIES: Stay there. The first report was we're finding more clarity on what's going on. And then about another five minutes later, they said, OK it's time to evacuate. Everyone go to the stairwells and get up and go. That's when we did.

And it was a little nerve wracking in the stairwell. Nobody knew what was going on. But we did feel the tremor, so that's what made it a little more surreal.

MARQUEZ: Was it orderly getting out? Were you able to get out properly?

ARIES: Yes. It was a little congested. A lot of floors in the building to get out. A lot of people. But there was a moment in which we all couldn't get out of the building immediately because we were backlogged in there.

MARQUEZ: How long were you at your desk before you started to move, five minutes?

ARIES: I would say about five or 10 minutes is when we started to get up and out of there and evacuate from the 14th floor. But it took a good amount of time to get out of the building. There was congestion in the stairwell.

[14:50:04] MARQUEZ: And when you heard -- did you hear it? Was -- at what point did you know it was an aircraft that hit the building?

ARIES: Everyone in the stairwell was just checking the news to find out what was going on. At a couple points in time, we couldn't -- we were just so congested that we weren't able to get out fast. So once everyone was checking their phones, we were looking for news, for updates. It wasn't until we got outside of the building that we understood it was a helicopter that hit the building.

MARQUEZ: I take it that would have been less helpful to know that information?

ARIES: Yes.

MARQUEZ: There's a lot of history.

ARIES: Yes. There were a lot of sirens going on when we got out of the building and --

MARQUEZ: Did you smell smoke or see fire?

ARIES: No, none of that. None of that.

MARQUEZ: Do you know if there's a helicopter pad on top of this building?

ARIES: I do not know that, no.

Can I get your name?

ARIES: Yes. Morgan Aries.

MARQUEZ: Thank you very much.

(CROSSTALK)

MARQUEZ: So these are the sort of -- pardon me. These are the sort of stories that we'll hear time and again from people who got out of this building. It just very unnerving for people. A lot of confusion. It's surprising to hear they were told to stay in their seats until they figured more and only then did they effect an evacuation.

Clearly, this building, I don't know what year it was built, but it's not a brand-new building. I don't know what the evacuations routes are like but two people have now said there were very, very crowded stairways and it was concerning getting out of the building because of the crowding as they were trying to exit the building. But it sounds like the two floors, from the people we've spoken to so far, from 29th and the 14th, people were able to get out at least from those floors -- Brooke?

BALDWIN: Miguel, thank you so much.

You know, just to underscore your point --

MARQUEZ: Yes.

BALDWIN: -- it is eerie. It is PTSD to hear people say, I was on the 29th floor, the 18th floor, the stairwell was crowded trying to get out of there, alarms, the building shook.

But at least, thank goodness, in terms of fatalities, as Brynn was reporting, one confirmed dead. That's the pilot. Perhaps that's in addition to the other confirmed fatality. We just don't yet know.

I've got a tweet. Let me read this together. This is from FDNY: "Confirmed helicopter has crashed landed on this roof. The fire has been extinguished and members continue to operate in response to fuel leaking from the helicopter."

Miles O'Brien, I know you've been patiently waiting on the phone here. Let's pick our conversation back up.

You're our aviation expert. Let's start first from when you hear fuel leaking, I guess if you're making this forced landing as the governor described in this helicopter on the top of this 51-floor building, not a shock that there would be fuel leaking on the roof. Correct?

MILES O'BRIEN, NATIONAL SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT, PBS NEWSHOUR: Correct. Of course. And I suppose the good news in that is that perhaps that means the fuel was not burning. If there any indication of a fire? I'm looking at the same picture you are.

BALDWIN: You see that. It looks like smoke.

O'BRIEN: I don't know if that's smoke or something from HVAC system on the roof.

BALDWIN: Yes.

O'BRIEN: The thing that's really struck me here, Brooke, is that the meteorological conditions, the ceiling right now -- it might be lifting a little bit. But I just checked it at the time of the accident. It was 500 feet above the ground. That skyscraper at, I think some said it was 60 stories, is that right?

BALDWIN: Fifty-one, 51.

O'BRIEN: OK, so that puts it right about 500 feet, or a little above.

BALDWIN: Yes.

O'BRIEN: So that -- the top of that building would have been enshrouded by the clouds. You have to wonder, in this case, if there was a pilot who got lost and disoriented and lost visual contact with the ground in this case the building. That's a possibility.

Very bad weather to be flying a helicopter in New York. And yet, the rules for helicopters do allow it as long as you remain clear of the clouds, perhaps in this case, and as long as you're going at a speed which allows you to avoid collisions. Because helicopters can hover and move slowly, they have more liberal rules for visual flight rule flying. And so this might have been technically a legal flight.

But if the pilot got disoriented and in the clouds, lots of trouble can happen in a place like midtown Manhattan.

BALDWIN: How can you fly with the ceiling at 500 feet, period?

O'BRIEN: Well, you fly low. And helicopters are designed to fly low. To try to fly across midtown Manhattan within a ceiling of 500 feet is a fool's errand, of course.

Was this person trying to thread his way across Central Park or trying to fly on the rivers? There are all kinds of established helicopter routes on the Hudson River and the East River as well. Was there disorientation while flying? I don't know. But it's edgy weather to be flying in this part of the world.

[14:55:03] BALDWIN: You were making this point when we spoke a bit ago. You can no longer -- today would be an emergency situation. But you can no longer land a helicopter on a building in Manhattan, can you? O'BRIEN: No. There's none, except for the hospitals. There was a

heyday of flying between John F Kennedy Airport and the Pan Am Building. That ended abruptly in 1977 with that horrific crash I told you about a little while ago. After that, the city put all kinds of constraints on helipads on the tops of roofs and essentially banned it.

There are three helipads. There's the east and west side in the 30s and one at the tip of Manhattan near Wall Street. And that is where helicopters for sightseeing or for well-heeled business travelers come in and out of. There's no legal landing on top of buildings except in the case of the hospitals.

BALDWIN: So you mentioned, as you were talking about the low ceiling, that perhaps the pilot got lost or disoriented. What would be other reasons -- as this pilot was legally flying. What would be other reasons to force a landing on a 51-story midtown Manhattan building?

O'BRIEN: Well, if it's an engine-out scenario, in other words, or if there was some power loss, and he had to get it down quickly, in that location, midtown Manhattan, the top of a building would be as good a landing place as any in an emergency. That is a possibility, certainly. And that would be one of the things they'll look at right now.

But it's -- whatever happened, it has to be somewhat exacerbated by the weather, because while that was happening, he had to be pretty close to being in the clouds if not completely enshrouded by clouds on top of that building. That's not a good situation to be in.

BALDWIN: We have confirmed that the pilot has been killed. We don't know if that is the one single fatality or if there was another fatality in addition to the pilot.

Miles O'Brien, your expertise, as always, is invaluable.

Let me read this tweet from the president of the United States. He has just tweeted, "I have been briefed on the helicopter crash in New York City. Phenomenal job by our great first responders who are currently on the scene. Thank you for all you do 24/7/365. The Trump administration stands ready should you need anything at all."

We are near the top of the hour. And in case you're just joining us, we've been covering this helicopter crash landing on the top of this building, 51 stories. You see what could be smoke. Maybe it's something else. We can't confirm it. You're looking at it with your own eyes at the top of this building. This is where it all happened.

It has been pandemonium in terms of the response from New York fire, police, all responding to this helicopter.

Who was in it? How many people? Why was it was flying through midtown Manhattan on an awful weather day? We don't know.

Listening to Miles, legally flying, but for whatever reason, this pilot felt the need to force a landing, crash landed on the top of this building. That then caused a fire, which we're told from New York Fire has been contained.

But we've been listening to eyewitness account after eyewitness account, the 29th floor, the 18th floor, just describing the alarms going off in the building. Feeling the entire building shake as everyone was told not to take the elevators and rush into the stairwell and the length of time it took, right?

The governor referred to it as PTSD. Any time of hear of any aircraft flying into or on top of a building, one's mind goes back to 9/11.

In this case, again, we're reporting the pilot dead. Are there any other fatalities? Are there any other injuries? That's what we're waiting to find out.

We're also, of course, waiting to find out the conditions on the top of the building and if anyone else is still in the building as a result of this.

BALDWIN: So I've got Shimon Prokupecz, our justice correspondent. He's been a wealth of information in terms of the extraordinary response from the city of New York.

Shimon, let's start from scratch here. What do you know?

PROKUPECZ: Right. This helicopter, initial calls to the NYPD, and the FDNY indicated that perhaps a plane, a small plane may have crashed into this building. When the fire department and NYPD got to the scene, they realized it was a helicopter that made a hard landing, a crash landing onto the roof of 787 7th Avenue there, just blocks from Times Square. It's a 51-story building.

[15:00:04] The fire department and the NYPD Emergency Services Unit rushed up to the roof. They extinguished the fire. The helicopter was on fire.