A Helicopter Crash Unsettles the City

[Read more about the helicopter crash in Midtown Manhattan.]

Helicopter crash sites can pose difficulties, especially when they are hundreds of feet above the ground. Firefighters took elevators to the building’s upper floors, according to Daniel A. Nigro, the city’s fire commissioner. Once there, they used special hoses and “special pumpers” to put water on the fire.

“If you’re a New Yorker, you have a level of PTSD, right, from 9/11,” Governor Cuomo said at the scene.

[The crash showed the perils of flying over the city’s skyline.]

It is rare to see the exact moment a top official learns of an emergency. The Times’s Ali Watkins was interviewing a police official when it happened.

Here’s her dispatch:

Forty-five minutes before a helicopter crashed in Manhattan, I stepped into the office of John Miller, the Police Department’s deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism, at Police Headquarters. We had traded sporadic messages for weeks, trying to coordinate a meeting, and had finally nailed down a time.

Mr. Miller and I were wrapping up a wide-ranging discussion about terrorism. It was notable, we both remarked, that the city had gone some time without a major attack. The conversation was interrupted when a man stuck his head into Mr. Miller’s office.

There was a helicopter down in Manhattan, the man said. It was some kind of accident, possibly on a crowded Midtown street.

The words caused an instantaneous flurry at the headquarters. Mr. Miller sprang from his chair and said a polite goodbye, and then prodded anyone nearby for more details. I was a forgotten observer, standing awkwardly in the lobby as officers and other employees moved around me. “Helicopter?” “Crash landing?” “Midtown?” Words bounced around the reception area.