A FIRE at Manhattan's Rockefeller Centre early yesterday forced the evacuation of a 70 storey building and left 11 people slightly injured.
"We're fortunate. We have 11 injuries but none serious," the Mayor of New York, Mr Rudolph Giuliani, said in a CNN television interview at the scene.
Most of the injured reportedly were treated for smoke inhalation.
The mayor told CNN at about 8:15 a.m. yesterday that the blaze had been brought under control in the General Electric skyscraper, which houses NBC News and the celebrated Rainbow Room restaurant. The fire stopped all local NBC programming and shut down traffic in midtown Manhattan.
Although local news programming at WNBCTV was affected, the network's Today Show, located in a separate building across the street from 30 Rockefeller Centre went on the air.
The General Electric building is also home to the network's Nightly News programme and a number of other programmes are taped there, including Late Night with Conan O'Brien and the Rosie O'Donnell show.
The fire broke out in an electrical closet on the 10th floor where construction work was being carried out, and smaller fires were found on the eighth and ninth floors, a fire department spokesman, Mr Dave Billig, said. He declined to comment on the cause of the fire.
Officials at one point said the fire was burning on at least five floors and firefighters were trying to find its source and isolate it.
At least 300 firefighters were called to the blaze, which began at about 4 a.m. local time.