Charlie Rangel: NYC Building Collapse Is Harlem’s 9/11

Minutes after a deadly explosion leveled an apartment building in Harlem, Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) joined NBC’s local New York City anchors by phone to give his impressions of scale of that disaster. Rangel said that nothing that “horrific” had happened to the community he represents in Congress and that the tragedy is “our community’s 9/11.”

“This is a very serious thing,” Rangel told the WNBC anchors. “It’s our community’s 9/11, even though we don’t know how it started.”

“The whole New York delegation has been concerned, and members that are not in committee are glued to the television and hearing reports from you makes us at least a little closer to home,” he added.

RELATED: Developing: Apartment Building Explodes in Harlem, At Least Two Dead (UPDATED)

“I’ve never had anything this horrific that’s happened in my community since I’ve been in Washington,” Rangel continued. “I hope that soon, and very soon, it will be contained and we can go back to some degree of normal normalcy.”

Watch the clip below via WNBC:

h/t POLITICO

[Photo via AP]

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