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Man Dies In Bronzeville Building Collapse

CHICAGO (CBS) -- A man was killed Thursday afternoon when part of a building collapsed in the Bronzeville neighborhood.

Firefighters responded to a partial building collapse at 505 E. Pershing Rd. around 11:40 a.m., and found that a concrete roof had collapsed and taken out a portion of a brick wall in a one-story building, and landed on a worker.

"The first companies on the scene reported that we had a flexicore roof that had collapsed, and pushed out a wall, and we had one male in his mid to late 40s that was pinned under the concrete," Chicago Fire Department Special Operations Chief Michael Fox said.

Firefighters specially trained to respond to building collapses spent 45 minutes to an hour shoring up the concrete before they could remove the man's body from two roof beams. He was dead when they got to the scene.

"You just can't pick these up and haphazardly do it, because our members are in there, and we've got to be safe. So there's ways that we have to shore this up, and that's why we called for a collapse response. We bring in more specialized equipment, and more trained individuals to shore the building up. We work slow to make sure that nothing else moves, and nobody else gets hurt."

The cause of the collapse was under investigation.

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