Gair, Gair, Conason, Rubinowitz, Bloom, Hershenhorn, Steigman & Mackauf is a New York Plaintiff's personal injury law firm specializing in automobile accidents, construction accidents, medical malpractice, products liability, police misconduct and all types of New York personal injury litigation.
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One NYC construction worker dead and 5 others injured in building collapse

A hard hat died and five others were injured after a building under construction partially collapsed in the Bronx. 48 year old Segundo Huerta, a father of five, was working on a construction site located at 92 East 208 Street in the Bronx, on Monday around noon, when the third floor of the building started to crumble and falling on workers below. Segundo and his colleagues were hit and buried in concrete and debris.  When  the firefighters arrived, Segundo was trapped and by the time they were able to recover him he had succumbed to fatal injuries.

The other construction workers injured  were Segundo’s family members or good friends. His 21 year old nephew Manuel Giovanni Huerta suffered a serious spine injury. His cousin Santiago Mayancela suffered a torn ear and a leg injury. Luis Romero, the brother of Segundo’s sister in law suffered a serious head injury. Two friends from the family Luis Antonmio Quizhpi and a man identified as Jose were also injured. The group of workers had been working together on construction  sites for more than 12 years. Segundo, originally from Ecuator, had been living in the US for 19 years. The family and relatives that gathered at the scene of the accident were heart broken.

OVERLOADED FLOOR CAVED IN

According to the NY Daily News, Segundo Huerta was bringing heavy material up to the third floor which was already overloaded with concrete masonry blocks when the floor gave way.  100 firefighters came to the rescue. The operation was complicated and dangerous. They used a ladder up to the second floor and had to work extremely cautiously to extract the workers from the rubble while making sure that the second floor would not collapse on the first one.

A stop work order was issued by the DOT. The site didn’t have previous violations but neighbors had been complaining in the past because the scaffolding in front of the building seemed shoddy and because the workers were using all the parking spots.