Mayor Adams: Robotic dog, drone used to assess Lower Manhattan parking garage collapse
NEW YORK -- Mayor Eric Adams has made it clear he is a strong proponent of technology.
He has touted advances that are now being used by the NYPD, and on Tuesday afternoon similar tech was deployed when a serious situation unfolded in Lower Manhattan.
Not long after the parking garage collapse at 57 Ann St., which the mayor said killed one person and injured several others, the city sent in a robotic dog and a drone to assess the situation.
Watch: Yonkers Fire Lt. explains how robots, drones help investigations
"I do want to point out that thank God we had the robotic dog that was able to go in the building. This is ideally what we talk about -- not sending a human being inside a building that was unstable. We were also able to use the technology of a drone to give a real visualization of what's happening in this building," Adams said.
"At this time this building is completely unstable ... we do not want to send in someone until we can make sure the building is shored up. But using the necessary technology we're able to get a clear view of what's happening inside the building, for the most part, and do whatever we can to see if there are any more victims," he added.
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FDNY Chief of Fire Operations John Esposito explained some of the technology's practical capabilities.
"Our Command Tactical Unit, Robotics Unit, when they go, either the robot dog or the drones, they're able to stream the video directly to our phones, directly to our command center, we're able to share that," Esposito said. "The great part of that is we're able to put these, use the technology to get information and reconnaissance without putting our firefighters' lives and our first responders' lives at risk. Great advances in technology, and we've used the dogs before."
Esposito said Tuesday was an important moment for the city.
"This is the first time that we've been able to fly inside in a collapse to do this and try to get us some information, again, without risking the lives of our firefighters," Esposito said.
Last week, the NYPD and the mayor unveiled a robotic dog to be used in crime-fighting situations, and the StarChase system, which avoids dangerous car chases by attaching a GPS tag, either by mounted or hand-held launchers.