Partial building collapse in downtown Aurora prompts evacuations

We're not going to waste any time before getting to our breaking news that we're following in Aurora. Let's send it right to Fox Chicago's Joni Lum, who's live at the scene of a partial building collapse. Joni, walk us through what you're seeing there. Hi, Anita. We are in downtown Galena, Aurora on Galena Boulevard, which is shut down for this. There are emergency vehicles here on the scene and it is a dramatic one. I want to show you the building collapse that has happened here. It's mostly scaffolding that you see in front of the building, but part of the exterior wall of this building fell into the street. Three people suffered minor injuries. There is a business on the ground floor. It's a barber shop. The upper floors are residential units, but they were vacant at the time. The Aurora Fire Department, the police, they responded to the scene. Officials flew a drone overhead to make sure that no one was inside this building. No one was, it was vacant. But now, the building is a hazard to the public. This is the same building that had a partial collapse in August last year, and at that time, Some bricks fell into the street. It was minor, but the upper floors, those residential units, they were occupied and they had to evacuate the building. At some point, they built that scaffolding to protect the public while the building was being fixed for repairs. But City of Aurora engineers, they are here on the scene. They say the building is at least 100 years old. They don't know what caused this collapse, but the age of the building, definitely a factor. Driving downtown, didn't see anything wrong with this building at all. We're going to have to wait and see what happens. Unfortunately, there are times that the actual structure itself just gives out on older buildings like this type. So right now we can't determine to see exactly what had taken place. If it was the wall that gave out, if it was the roof that gave out, if there's water ponding on the roof and putting a lot of dead weight on there. We're still assessing that issue. They do say that there were some permits to rehab the residential units that are upstairs, and so they were prepping this building for just that. They couldn't determine when the last inspection was done in this building, but they say it's a very old building. And also, the city of Aurora does have cameras downtown. Officials are going to be looking at those cameras to see just how that collapse happened, whether it was in sections, but they believe it happened all at once. Since now, bricks in the street and the downtown Streets are shut down for this investigation. Reporting live in Aurora, I'm Joni Lum, Fox Chicago. Oh yeah, it must because 6:37 in the evening, those three minor injuries, they didn't go into details about how those injuries happen. But we know that when buildings collapse like this, the bricks, they shoot out and fire officials are always telling us you've got to be two times the height away from a building like this. And so if it's three stories, anyone within the vicinity could Could get hurt badly, but they're telling us they are definitely minor injuries. Pretty lucky here. But there is that barbershop on the ground floor. And so the business owner, I think, is around here concerned about whether they're going to be able to reopen, too. The rest of the building was vacant. Still a lot of questions, I'm sure, to sift through, as well as the rubble there. Thank you so much, Joni. We appreciate it.