1 man dead after fire breaks out at Trump Tower
MIDTOWN, Manhattan (WABC) -- One man is dead after a fire broke out at Trump Tower in Midtown, police say.
The four-alarm fire broke out on the 50th floor just after 5:30 p.m. Saturday. The fire was placed under control approximately two hours later.
Firefighters pulled Todd Brassner, 67, from the 50th floor of the building. He was unconscious and unresponsive. He later died at the hospital. Six firefighters also suffered minor injuries. Two of the six firefighters are suffering from burns.
"This is a very difficult fire, as you can imagine. The apartment is quite large. We're 50 stories up. The rest of the building had considerable amount of smoke," said FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro.
CeFaan Kim was live at the scene:
"We're just standing there watching it. It was scary. It was very surreal. And then we saw the counterterrorism guys suit up," says Jordan Podell.
And it was even more terrifying from the inside.
Credit: Jeff Young and Steve Lezamiz
Claudia Ospina lives on the 37th floor.
"We were panicked because all the time when you live here, you believe the emergency is the worst - because like a terrorist attack or something like that," Ospina said.
Another resident said the phones inside the building did not work.
"Michael Cohen, who is Trump's lawyer was texting me and said 'are you in the building? I said 'yes.' He said 'you better get out ASAP!'" said Dennis Shields.
Shields, who was childhood friends with the president's attorney, lives eight floors below where the fire broke out.
"You could smell the smoke, and you could just hear things falling through the vents," he added.
Twitter video shows flames shooting out of the building:
President Trump is currently at the White House and not Trump Tower. He tweeted a thank you to firefighters once the flames were contained.
Eric Trump, the president's second-oldest son, tweeted that the fire was in a residential apartment at the tower.
There were no evacuations inside the building, but some people self-evacuated.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
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