park over there, that whole area has now been swept clean and no one is there? is that right? yes, it s completely empty. they are not letting anyone through at this time. they actually closed down the end of 16th street as well. that whole entire block where the park is down the street they re redirecting traffic as well. it s completely shut down as well. they are working on this. we should point out, the president is currently meeting with gulf arab leaders at camp david. he s not at the white house. i don t know about the first lady. i assume that the rest of the family the daughters they re in school right now, but this is a picture weir just getting we re just getting in showing what s going on. it looks like the secret service uniformed personnel are detaining somebody on the ground there. but, the individual do we know if this was really a drone, it was possibly some sort of model plane, kristen? well that s what i m saying we are not positive yet. we did hear two con
again last night, ignoring that request from bill de blasio, the mayor. reporter: christine, we re in middle of lexington, 116th street. the crowd here, 700 strong. it s got be more vociferous throughout the night. and madison. and a little shocked to see them coming down the street, racism against police, as they say. the mayor asking not to do this very thing. these people making the point that they will continue to protest. they see the shootings of these police officers here and the protests of the night as two separate things. they say they will not be quiet. that s why they ve taken to the streets. police worked very hard for much of the night to keep on the sidewalks as they got farther up
stay away given the divide that s been noted between the police department and the mayor s office. those in political and law enforcement said it would be rare that the mayor didn t attend. it s going to be a very emotional time. yes, very emotional. despite calls bit mayor for halts to demonstrations until after the funeral services for these two officers. protesters ignored mayor de blasio. cnn s miguel marquez was right in the middle of it. here s his report. reporter: christine, we re in the middle of lexington, 116th street. the crowd here several hundred strong. it s gotten more vociferous, it starts on fifth avenue with shoppers on fifth and madison, a little shocked to see the protesters coming down streets protesting against racism and the police, as they say.
116th street and east harlem. we are told that this explosion happened somewhere around 9:30 eastern time. coming up here, listening to local news reports, witness accounts on the radio here, one woman called from frederick douglass boulevard, which is about 2 to 3 avenues, which are long, long blocks from where i am. she said she heard the explosion this morning. so that gives you a sense of the magnitude, how big this was. also, one of the main train lines out of new york city, called the metro north, that runs right in this area. we would track it above ground. another person also called in for the local news saying there was debris on the tracks. just to give you the sense of the magnitude. i tried to walk up to the building and got about half a block away and watts turns turn by the police. as adam said, everyone is
and ever so slightly, not really, that fire is still raging. looks like it is still pretty heavy. we re hearing 168 firefighters are on the scene right now. we re hearing that they re handing out smoke masks to people in the area. sure. i want you to take a quick look at the picture right now that somebody tweeted. look at the police officers in the area. what does this remind you of? kind of a frightening, frightening picture this is what is happening on park avenue and 116th street as we speak right now. we have serious situation. thank goodness whatever is happening is much, much smaller scale than the tragedy of 13 years ago. yes, the scene quite reminiscent, the mood, the feel, most certainly. you re hearing, we just talked to somebody on the street said they smelt gas in the area yesterday. there are unconfirmed report that that particular building had some kind of a gas problem