UPDATE: During a press conference Monday morning, the fire chief said one person was found and rescued from the building overnight then was taken to the hospital. The mayor says seven people and a child are staying at the Red Cross shelter at CASI.
The Red Cross is coordinating the efforts to help the displaced tenants and find resources to meet their needs. To donate money to help, call 1.800.RedCross.
Crews with special training and search dogs are looking for people in the six-story building.
Mayor Matson praised the work of first responders who immediately went into the apartment building to find at least a dozen residents and escort them out.
Here's the video of the Monday morning press conference.
PREVIOUS VERSION May 28th, 2023: Mayor Matson and other city officials held a press conference (video below). It's not known how many people may have been injured or killed.
The Red Cross is operating a shelter at CASI for people displaced by the collapse. There were about 80 apartments in the building.
Transcript below not edited for accuracy, punctuation, or grammar.
[Mayor Matson] Okay, thank you all for coming. As you can see, we had a tragic event today. Multi-building floor, collapsed want to say that our First Responders multi agencies responded with the sole purpose of finding people and getting them out of the building. We continue to do that. Multiple agencies are First Responders. Police fire, medic County State, Talk to the governor offered full assistance.
We have our structural people here. We have our fire rescue people in going in again. We escorted people out initially, we continue to look, we continue to evaluate the structure. What is needed? And they're right back in again, trying to see if the needs more assistance in finding more people. This is an active scene. We will continue to work, continue to evaluate and in with the whole purpose, Purpose of trying to find people and trying to get them out,
I'll be followed by the fire chief to give more details on the rescue, our structural folks, and then I'll come back up for questions. Thank you.
Thank you, mr. Mayor. Mike Carlson Fire chief at 4:55 this afternoon. We are dispatched for a building collapse. Our crews arrived on scene about a six-story apartment complex with a portion of the rear building. It actually collapsed is separated from the building Crews.
Also found a large natural gas leaks and water leaking from all floors of the structure.
Fire Crews were able to rescue seven individuals on their initial response. And escort more than a dozen individuals out as they were self evacuating from the building.
Medic was on scene and medic quickly established a patient care area for us. And with the assistance of metic Rock Island, Arsenal Fire and Rock Island, fire department. We are able to take care of any injuries that we are able to come across that point for the victims that were from the structure that we're able to walk out. Terribly at this time. It's too early to know about that.
So I could tell you that we did establish a reunification area and st. Anthony's church people that were missing family members. We asked them to go at the st. Anthony's Church. We've had the Red Cross over there. We also have medic staff. They're seen to actually help with that.
We've requested Mid-America energy, and also America water. They have responded to the scene and they are able to secure the utilities, so that fire First can actually, get back inside the structure to actually start the search and rescue operations.
Again, we have requested MABUS 43, technical Rescue Team. This is a very specialized rescue and very time-consuming rescue operation and we need to have some more expertise and more manpower to help us with that. So of our concerns at this time is still the structural stability of the building and trying to locate unaccounted for individual.
The crews will continue to work through the night. In fact, Crews have just started to enter the building again to do a secondary search and also start with the rescue of the debris pile that we have at the bottom of the building, we will continue to do that until this operation is completed.
Please notice the mayor said that this area is going to be closed for extended period of time. This is going to be a long lengthy process. SS is going to be a while for us to get this taken care of. Thank you, Jeep. The building owner did have permits to make exterior wall repairs. There was under direction of his hired engineer. So at this time you did have permits in place for the repairs. Thank you.
Questions.
Repair work on the exterior brick of the building. So over the past year, they've had two other permit issues for exterior brick work, the bricks that were reported following this week. We're part of the repair work being done.
Our focus is to see if there's any more victims and do more searches and get the people taking care of.
We are there are some people unaccounted for but we're continued to locate them in search at this time, I don't have any confirmation of that.
So we can, there was gas after the actual collapse. I do not know the condition before the collapse happened. That this was an act of Apartment complexes residence in there, so yes, they did have gas and they did have water electricity to it.
Sure, yep. So The Tenants in this building are pretty active. They've called the city numerous times with complaints that for different things that were addressed by a city inspectors and notice it orders were issued to the building owner for repairs. So,
So the current knows a would have been on the wall work itself, so that's time. One more time, sir.
So the Red Cross is there helping and we are engaging our folks take to find some cdbg funds and assistance in those. The Red Cross will be looking for temporary housing for them. They most likely will not be at st. Anthony's overnight, I do not have an accurate number at this time.
Secondary drops of debris, coming from that structure. We want to make sure that all of our responders Able to process through in a safe manner it would but we still want to get through there as quickly as possible. I have not I'm not aware of a dog but there may be a dog.
Correct. We did call in Mavis 43 which is the career fire departments from the Iowa and Illinois, Quad City area, they specialize in, technical rescue. We also have put the state, use our team on standby, and the governor's offered all systems, and I'm in constant contact with her. Thank you. Thank you.
