"The power shut off. It was just crazy inside. It just sounded like bombs were dropping everywhere." That's how an Amazon employee describes to WBAL what happened Friday night at one of the company's fulfillment centers in southeast Baltimore after the building partially collapsed. A 50-foot-by-50-foot wall was said to have come down, and one person was found unresponsive under the debris after first responders arrived on the scene just before 10:30pm, Baltimore City Fire Department rep Roman Clark tells CNN. That person was taken to a hospital and declared dead, per CBS Baltimore; a second body was found early Saturday, officials say. It's not yet clear if the deceased were Amazon workers.
Worker Brandon McBride further describes the chaos as the building fell apart. "There was stuff falling everywhere, you could see the walls were caving in," he tells WBAL. "Rain was pouring everywhere; all the packages were soaked. It's unreal." Clark notes that bad weather was sweeping through the area around the time of the collapse, and Amazon seems to be pointing the finger at that, noting in a statement to WBAL that "severe weather damaged one of our facilities in Baltimore City." (A just-opened mall collapsed in Mexico over the summer.)