NEW YORK (1010 WINS/WCBS 880) — While the Department of Buildings, MTA and Department of Transportation have yet to report any serious infrastructural issues following Friday morning’s 4.8 magnitude earthquake and the evening’s 4.0 aftershock, the NYPD decided to send out its drones in order to help inspect bridges and buildings across the city.
“Throughout the day, NYPD has [been] conducting flyovers in areas around the city with their UAV drones, conducting surveys of building rooftops to look for structural damage and other potential areas of concern,” Press Secretary for the DOB Andrew Rudansky said in a statement to 1010 WINS/WCBS 880.
In interviews with NBC4 and ABC7, NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Operations Kaz Daughtry explained the benefits of enlisting the help of the department’s Technical Assistance Response Unit and their drones.
In addition to being launched off the roof of One Police Plaza, drones were hand-launched off of NYPD patrol boats to get different angles of bridges.
Daughtry said that the drones are “Looking for any anomalies, any structural deficiencies on our bridges. Loose cables, bricks that were maybe about to come out but didn’t fall out right away. Nothing to report right now.”
The drones are viewed by both NYPD authorities and artificial intelligence, which is able to analyze video in a matter of minutes. The video streams can also be shared directly with building officials.
“Right now, if they see something, we can shoot this right to—I can send this text message to the Department of Buildings Commissioner Jimmy Oddo, and he can look and have his engineers right there in his office look and see what’s going on,” Daughtry said.
Oddo warned that while there have yet to be any reported problems, the DOB will be on high-alert this weekend to assist with any potential structural issues.
"We at the Department of Buildings are concerned about some of the downstream possibilities, cracks that you might see that may materialize and manifest in a week or a month or scaffolding, retaining walls, if you see something that is problematic, please call 311," Oddo said during a news briefing with city officials on Friday.
In addition to staffing the DOB with additional engineering and construction officials this weekend to manage any potential reports of problems, the department also told property owners, contractors and crane operators to inspect their buildings, sites and equipment to ensure safety.
Daughtry noted the responsibility of the NYPD to keep people safe in any way possible, and to quell public fears about tragedies like the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore last week.
“I’m sure, when this earthquake happened, and before people go across that bridge, I know that they’re thinking like ‘oh my God is this bridge safe?’” Daughtry said. “So we want to make sure that we are doing our job as a police department, helping the Department of Transportation and Buildings assess these bridges.”
The focus of interagency collaboration in the coming days is to keep New Yorkers safe, officials said.
“We thank NYPD for their continued partnership, and look forward to continuing to work with them as they deploy drone technology in the interest of protecting our fellow New Yorkers,” Rudansky said.