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 is where it happened. it s 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 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 18 th floor. just describing the alarms going off in the building. feeling the entire building shake as everyone was told not
Have a level of ptsd from 9/11. and i remember that morning all too well. and as soon as you hear an aircraft hit a building, i think my mind goes where every new yorker s mind goes. now, i spoke to one witness who was on the 29th floor when they went down those stairs, they were not sure they were doing the right thing, because they could smell smoke in their stairwell. i spoke to another witness who was standing about where i am. i he heard the explosion, looked up and saw smoke, very heavy black smoke coming off of that building and then a piece of debris came down about 12 inches long, about a 5 feet away from him. it wasn t very heavy, but it could have injured him. and he just saw the building started to people started pouring out of that building as soon as that helicopter hit. but it wasn t until about ten minutes later that all of the floors were evacuated. wolf? very scary incident, indeed. miguel marquez on the scene for us. thank you.
There were just too many people. it was too crowded, and everybody was trying to get off on all the floors at the same. reporter:. when this happened, what did you feel and 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. 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 well, that might have happened again. but when they said that a helicopter hit, we thought, a helicopter? reporter: you were on the 29th floor, did you smell smoke? did you see fire? only coming down the staircase, you could smell it coming down the staircase because that staircase is like one big shaft, a vent.
reporter: 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. i don t know what year the building was built, but it s not a brand new building. i don t know the evacuativac ro. two people said 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 fltwo floors from the 29th and 14th people were able to get out at least from those floors. miguel, thank you. it is erie. it is ptsd to hear people say i was on the 29th floor, the 18 th floor, the stairwell was crowded trying to get out of there.
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 were nervous, because that thought is in the back of your mind. reporter: may i have your name? any name is nathan hutton. reporter: you re on the 29th floor? that was nathan hutton. he was in the building. he,ed out the stairwell like so many other people around 2:00 eastern today after that helicopter crash landed on the top of their building in the middle of midtown manhattan. this is just south of central park. we re getting new information from the manager of the faa communications. i want to parse through the different lines. and miles o brien, our aviation analyst is on the phone with me. miles, they ve now named the type of helicopter. it s an augusta a 109-e helicopter that crashed. can you tell me anything about the make and model?