‘You don't see buildings falling down in America': Mayor shocked after 12-story Miami condo 'literally pancaked'

Mayor Charles Burkett, on the scene of a partial collapse of a 12-story 100-unit condominium building in Surfside, Florida said he's lived in the town his entire life and has never seen anything like this.

"You don't see buildings falling down in America," Burkett, stunned, told CNN Thursday morning, "and here we had a building literally fall down."

He said it's "less likely than a lightning strike."

One person is reported dead after the building collapsed around 2 AM with CNN saying a "considerable portion" of the building is gone. Burkett suggests there may be more fatalities.

"The problem is the building has literally pancaked," he says. "It's heartbreaking because it doesn't mean, to me, that we're going to be successful, as successful as we want to be, to find people alive."