At least one person was killed and one boy was pulled to safety after a high-rise condominium building partially collapsed early Thursday near Miami Beach.

A massive search and rescue effort was underway following the incident at the 12-story building in Surfside, a town in Florida's Miami-Dade County. In addition to the fatality, which was confirmed by Miami-Dade Police, at least 10 people were being treated for injuries at the scene, according to Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett. Aventura Hospital and Medical Center said it received three patients, including two in critical condition. “It’s hard to imagine how this could happen,” Burkett told NBC's "TODAY" show. “Buildings just don’t fall down.”

He said that the building had roof work going on, "but you would never expect that to be the issue. I think that this is a catastrophic failure of that building."

"I mean it looks like a bomb went off, but we're pretty sure a bomb didn't go off," Burkett added.

Though authorities have not released exact numbers, the mayor said there were "quite a few" people in the building at the time of the collapse. Some were able to make their way to the front of the structure as the back collapsed.

The Red Cross was working to get people from 15 units set up at hotels after they escaped from the building on their own, Burkett said.

Search dogs weren't finding any survivors, which is "a great disappointment," he said.

"When the building came down, it pancaked," Burkett said. "So there's just not a lot of voids that they're finding, or seeing from the outside. That's a tragedy."

The whole building is about 100 units, and a third of it collapsed, Burkett added.

"There's just feet in between stories," he later added.

Footage from the scene showed a large section of the multistory building collapse into a pile of rubble below. NBC Miami aired video of a boy being pulled out of the rubble alive and being placed on a stretcher.

"The Miami-Dade Fire Department has been awesome," Burkett said. "They've gotten in there and they're in there risking their lives. I mean we don't know if the rest of that building's gonna come down."

Emergency crews were going from balcony to balcony with a fire ladder on the side of the building that was left standing, seemingly looking for people who might be trapped.

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue was on the scene of the incident near 88th Street and Collins Avenue with more than 80 fire rescue units involved in the response, the agency said.

That included a Technical Rescue Team that is trained in the removal of victims trapped in complex or confined spaces, fire officials said.

Municipal fire departments and Miami Beach police were also assisting.

"It's a very active scene, I advise everyone to just stay out of the area so that fire rescue and officers can conduct rescues and do what we need to do," Surfside Police Sgt. Marian Cruz said, according to NBC Miami.

Records showed the condo, called Champlain Towers South, was built in 1981. It is located across from a sandy beach in the oceanfront community of about 6,000 people.

Police blocked nearby roads and traffic in the area was diverted early Thursday. Burkett said that 50 hotel rooms next to the condo were also evacuated.