to take the elevators and rush into the stairwell and the length of time it took. the governor referred to it as ptsd any time of hear of any aircraft flying into or onto 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. also the conditions on the top of the building and if anyone else is still in the building as a result of this. so i ve got shimon, our justice couldn t. he s been a wealth of information in terms of the response from new york. shimon, what do you know? reporter: right. this helicopter initial calls to the nypd, and the fdny indicated that perhaps 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
if i could ask you, and i know it s difficult to see and maneuver. the other question certainly there s a possibility if this helicopter went into this building that something may have rained down on to the street. it appears based on what you re describing that that does not appear to be the case. reporter: yeah. we don t see anything like you said, raining down. that was when we were driving here and we knew to go to 51st and 7th, we were looking up in the sky looking to follow a path, but there wasn t anything visibly from the street that we could see, at least on the way here or here right now. i mean, the air doesn t feel or smell or seem any different than what it would be on a normal rainy day here. a lot of people even around me kind of looking up trying to figure out what s going on with their umbrellas as the police continue to expand the crime scene tape and make the scene larger and larger for fewer and fewer people to get through. we have people directing
racing up the building. you heard the governor say they re putting that out. they re making that response as the whole building is being evacuated at this point to respond to that rooftop. hard to imagine on a day like today you d be sightseeing in a helicopter over manhattan. but myles o brien is the expert in all things aviation. myles, i don t know if you re in manhattan and you ve seen how hard this rain has been coming down all day long, but when you hear the governor describe it as a crash landing or what did he say, a forced landing on the roof of this building, what would be reasons to do that? well, brooke, in the case of helicopters, if you lose an engine, let s say it s a single engine helicopter, the helicopter is capable of doing what s called an auto rotation. essentially the blades keep spinning but just under by virtue of the wind going past them, but it can be survivable.
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. 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. sir, when this incident happened, what did you feel? what did you hear? 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.
and again, we re obviously working to find out how many injuries there are if anyone has survived this. obviously a chaotic when you think about where this happened, time square of 51st and 7 th avenue is in the center of manhattan in the heart of manhattan. it s a serious, serious situation here. you can see that by the response from the nypd and the fire department, brooke. shimon, thank you for jumping in and we ll let you go and you can make your calls to sources to nypd and beyond. if you re just joining us, we re reporting on a pretty intense situation in the heart of midtown manhattan. this is time square. you re seeing the rescue vehicles and fire running to the scene as there has been in the early on i can t say if it was an accident. it s a helicopter crash into this building at 7th avenue and 51st. that s just around time square. it is pouring rain, in manhattan