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Articles Posted in Construction Accident

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New York Construction SiteAs part of its yearly Safety Week Campaign, the New York City Department of Buildings will deploy 90 safety inspectors throughout the city to inspect construction sites and educate construction workers about safety. This year the inspectors will emphasize the new Local Law 196 compliance and distribute written material in various languages. The inspectors will have various backgrounds and will come from the Department’s newly created Construction Safety Compliance and Construction Safety Enforcement units, the Cranes and Derricks Unit, the Scaffold Safety Unit, and the Special Operations Unit.

5000 construction site visit in one week

The inspectors will not only promote safety by distributing flyers but will also effectuate regular safety sweeps and take necessary actions if needed. If the construction sites visited do not comply with safety standards, contractors and developers could face up to $25 k penalties and even see their construction site temporary closed if the lives of the construction workers are being endangered. The DOB inspectors will visit approximately 5000 sites between May 6 and 10.

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harness safety equipment on scaffoldOn April 28th, Workers Memorial Day commemorated those who have suffered and died on the job. The NY construction industry accounts for a large share of the deaths and injuries suffered by workers. While fatal construction accidents have declined by 23% in New York City over the last 5 years they increased by 39% in New York State. The main reason behind this discrepancy is the difference in regulations. While stronger regulations and an increase of enforcement and control could help reduce the construction safety crisis in New York State, businesses are heavily lobbying against them.

In New York City things are not perfect either ( 3 construction workers died over a one week period last month) but long term statistics indicate that new and old policies are helping in making construction sites safer for workers. In 2019 the funding for the New York City Department of Buildings increased to 189 million compared to 107 million in 2015. The Department was able to hire 700 more employees and increase the number of work-site inspections.  The recent implementation of Local Law 196 that requires all construction workers to have a minimum amount of safety training before being able to work on a construction site in New York City will also be helpful in preventing dangerous injury and deaths.

Scaffold Safety Law

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NYC construction workers and their families commemorated the 16 hard hats who died and the many others who were injured  in construction accidents in New York City last year in a mass held at St Patrick’s Cathedral last Thursday. The hardhat procession into the cathedral was followed by a memorial service in the cathedral. In an emotional celebration, families and friends commemorated the 16 workers who died on construction sites between April 28 2018 and April 28 2019. Among the workers who died 13 were non unionized construction workers, 2 of them unionized workers and one was a security guard. 16 empty chairs with a hard hat and a rose were installed in the front of the church with the name of each deceased worker.

The construction industry has more deaths than any other industry in New York City and in the US as well. As the construction market is booming in the city  so do construction accidents injuries and fatalities. According to city data, compared to 5 years ago,  deaths of construction workers are up 33 % and injuries 221% in New York City. This month only, 3 construction workers lost their lives over a period of one week.

Non unionized workers are the most at risk of dying on New York Construction sites

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harness safety equipment on scaffold The leading cause of construction workers deaths are falls. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently released a brochure with information on how employers and construction workers can better prevent fall injuries and deaths. Every year in the US more than 31o workers die and more than 10,350 are injured after falling from heights. Workers on roofs, workers on ladders and workers on scaffolds have the highest risk of getting injured in a fall. According to statistics from the US Department of Labor, in 2016, 124 workers died after falling from a roof, 104 of them died after falling from a ladder and 60 of them died after falling from a scaffold.

Roofers have the most dangerous occupation

81% of people dying after falling from a roof are construction workers. Most common factors contributing to this fatal accidents are inexperience, lack of fall protection,  no safety harness, fall protection system not proprely installed, working alone, bad weather conditions. Falls can be prevented by implementing a serious fall protection program, making sure workers all have proper safety equipment and are proprely trained to use it,inspecting fall equipment, using proper anchorage, using buddy system and monitoring weather conditions

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Gregory EchevarriaA NYC hard hat who was installing a crane died after the counter weight he was setting fell on him.

34 year old Gregory Echevarria was part of a crew installing a crane at a luxury residential development located at 570 Broome Street in Soho early Saturday morning. A little bit after 3:00 am the crane counterweight that Echevarria was installing slipped and fatally struck him. The crew immediately called 911. When the EMS crew arrived they found him unresponsive with severe injuries all over his body. He was declared dead at the scene of the accident. Two other workers were also injured in the accident.  People who were in the area at the time of the accident reported a very loud sound as the 7.5 ton counterweight fell.

After the accident the crane was moved and a stop work order was issued by the Department of Buildings. The 570 Broom project is being built by  Agime Group. KSK Construction Group is managing the construction project. The DOB previously received several safety complaints for the site.

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A young construction worker fatally fell from a building in New York City last Wednesday. 23 year old Erik Mendoza was replacing bricks underneath a water tower located on the rooftop of  1 Pierrepont Street in Brooklyn Heights when he fell off the building. A Mexican immigrant, Mendoza had arrived in the US 5 years ago.  He had just started his job as a construction worker for the building a week before the accident.

No permit required doesn’t mean no worker protection

The work Mendoza was doing wasn’t didn’t require a permit, however it is the responsibility of the employer to make sure that employees effectuate their work in safe conditions. As he was working under the water tower with a colleague, he slipped and fell 13 stories, landing in front of the entrance of the luxury co-op pre-war building.

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Fall Prevention Campaign887 workers lost their life after falling at their job sites in 2017 according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is the highest number of fall deaths ever recorded by the BLS since the agency started to track these numbers almost 30 years ago. Fall fatalities account for 17% of all job-related fatalities and 40% of all construction job-related fatalities.

The most at risk are often construction workers with little training and experience who have been hired to work on construction sites after the recent boom in construction led to a labor force shortage in the industry. 60% of construction workers who died in a fall in 2017 were working for small companies (1 to 10 workers). As a comparison small construction companies only hire a third of the workforce in the construction industry in the US. Small companies are often hired for residential construction, a sector where fatal falls more than doubled between 2010 and 2015. Hispanic workers are the most at risk of dying in a fall accident. Language barrier, little training and also the fear of immigration authorities preventing undocumented workers to report dangerous conditions to OSHA are among the factors that led Hispanic workers to perform some of the most dangerous jobs in the construction industry.

Fall related violations are the most common OSHA violations

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311 E. 50th Street scaffolding accident locationA stone fell on the head of a NYC construction worker and killed him on Monday. 51 year old Nelson Salinas from Queens was on a scaffold, repairing the facade of  an Upper East Side residential building in Manhattan when the accident occurred.   A delivery man saw him dangling in midair with his head covered in blood and called 911. The worker was rushed to the hospital but he couldn’t be saved.

Nelson Salinas who was employed by Vlad Restoration, was performing minor facade repair on a suspended scaffold system. He was located at the 7th floor level of the 14-story building locates at 311 E. 50th Street near Second Ave when a coping stone that may have been knocked loose by the equipment used to secure the scaffolding to the facade fell on his head.  According to the Department of Buildings investigators the stone was a piece of the building’s parapet.  Read more about the accident in the NY Daily News

Preventing NYC Scaffold Accidents

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NYC Construction AccidentThe DOB recently released the presentations made at  last year’s Build Safe/Live Safe Conference. Among them,  “Construction Safety, Year in Review, Recent and Upcoming Changes” by Timothy Hogan and Patrick Wehle reviews and documents with pictures every fatal and near miss construction accident that occurred in New York City in 2017. Among the 12 fatalities, 1 worker died from electrocution and 11 died in falls that could have been prevented by following safety guidelines. In all 11 accidents, workers either weren’t wearing a harness or were wearing it but it wasn’t tied off proprely or not at all.

Near Misses resulting in serious injuries

The presentation also highlights 6 near misses that resulted in serious injuries for workers. These accidents were completely avoidable, related to the decision of the contractor and required extensive rescue operations. In one of the accidents a crane that was illegally modified dropped a 15,000 pound shearing hammer on a construction worker’s leg. Two accidents were related to a floor collapsing on workers because of overload. A shoring failure caused 6 workers to be caught in a collapse of 12+ yards of concrete. A small crane overturned after a stressed out operator failed to deploy the outriggers. 6 workers doing demo almost died in a roof collapse.

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construction safety weekNew York Construction Safety Week will take place from May 6 to 10 2019.  During this yearly awareness campaign staff members from the New York City Department of Buildings visit construction sites and promote safety. The week ends with the Build Safe, Live Safe Conference.

The subject of the multilingual campaign is “Experience is not Enough”. The campaign promotes the use of safety equipment especially fall protection. No matter how experienced a construction worker is or how many years he spent in his job, he should always use fall protection. Fall is the number one cause of fatalities in construction sites in New York and in the US. Employers are responsible to provide a safe work environment and prevent workers from falling. Leading edge and floor openings must be protected by guardrails, cable, netting, solid barrier or solid planking. If workers are performing tasks near an unprotected open floor, leading edge or shaft, they are required to wear a safety harness that is proprely connected to an approved anchor point. The campaign will also promote the safe usage of extension cords and the prevention of tripping hazards. Additionally, DOB staff members will provide tips on how to keep a construction site clean and ordered to prevent accidents. Construction workers will also be briefed on how to keep the public safe when walking near a construction site.

A conference to make construction in NYC safer

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