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.

Articles Tagged with construction accident NYC

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Domino_Sugar_refineryA construction worker fell to his death in New York City on Friday morning around 8:00 am. 59 year old Wilfredo Enrique was working on the facade of  a new residential development when he fell to his death.  Enrique was employed by Two Trees Management and was working on the construction site located on the old site of the Domino Sugar Factory in Brooklyn. After the accident the site was closed and investigators were working on determining the exact cause of the fatal accident.

According to the most recent complaints reported on the NYC Department of Building website, the scaffold didn’t meet the building safety code standard. The worker fell approximately 4 floors from the master climbingwork platform, after Two Trees Management failed to safeguard the platform.  Since the construction started 41 complaints have been filled. The Department of Building issued a total of 27 violations, most of them immediately hazardous. 3 of them were still open at the time of the accident. Among the open violation were the use of rigging equipment by a non licensed rigger and the failure to safeguard all persons and property affected by the construction operations.

The accident occurred just a few weeks after the death of two other NYC construction workers in Queens (see previous blog). According to Union representatives, Enrique is the 29th construction worker who died over the last two years in New York City. The boom in the construction sector in New York has led to an increase in construction jobs in the city. In 2015, the New York Building Congress recorded 138,200 construction jobs, the highest in 40 years.

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A construction worker suffered critical injury after he fell down an elevator shaft in NYC. The 42 year old man was an employee of Economy Elevator Inc. He was working on a construction site at 246 Johnson Ave in Brooklyn, NYC when he fell seven stories in the elevator shaft. Other workers who heard him scream came to the rescue and call the emergency medical workers. The workers was able to move his hands and his feet when the EMS put him on the stretcher. He was transported to the hospital in critical condition. According to DNA Info the worker was wearing a harness when he was found on the ground. However it is not clear if it was attached to anything at the time of the accident. Read more in DNA Info 

246 Johnson Ave is located at the corner of Bushwick Place near the Montrose L stop. In 2014 it was a one-story building that was bought by developer Moshe Silberstein. A residential building is now being constructed at this location. See below a picture of the building from Google map before development.

246 Johnson Ave

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construction workerThe New York City Department of Buildings announced earlier this year that 12 people died in  construction accidents in New York City in 2015 but the real number is 18. According to a recent article in Crain’s, the New York City Department of Buildings only counts deaths that are related to a violation of the city’s construction code.

Despite being featured by media and investigated by OSHA, all other deaths on NYC construction sites are not counted as construction accident deaths  in the DOB statistics. This obviously doesn’t make much sense. The DOB numbers are a distorted indication of the level of safety on New York construction sites.

Among the deaths that the city didn’t count were a hard hat who fell to his death in an elevator shaft,  a safety coordinator crushed by a crane, a worker who fell from a ladder and a truck driver who was sucked into a concrete truck shaft. Following these deaths, OSHA issued safety violations for each case. However the DOB didn’t and also didn’t add them to the total number of New York City construction accident deaths in 2015.

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steel plateThree construction workers suffered serious personal injury on a construction site in Brooklyn. The three hard hats were working on a building located on 21st Street near the Gownaus expressway. A steel plate came loose and struck the three workers. They were all transported to the hospital in serious condition.

Steel plates are commonly used in construction sites to reinforce structures. Construction accidents related to loose steel plates are unfortunately happening too often. Due to the heavy weight of the steel plate, they can result in serious personal injury or death. Workers and supervisors always should make sure that steel plates are proprely secured to prevent this type of construction accident.

Read more in the NY Post

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KingsbrookA hard hat worker suffered critical injury in a NYC construction accident yesterday. A construction truck hit a suspended cable line causing a pole to fall, knocking down the construction worker into a 15 foot trench. The accident happened at the corner of East 49th Street and Rutland Road in Brownsville, next to the Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center.

When Brian Yokers, one the ER doctors at the Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center, heard about a worker in cardiac arrest at the construction site next to the hospital he ran out to the construction site and followed the crowd to the trench. The worker was still breathing when he arrived. He stepped down the ladder into the trench to help the worker.  He held his head stable to prevent a spinal cord injury until the FDNY arrived with a neck brace. The worker was then placed on a backboard and hoisted out of the trench. He was then transported to the Kings County Hospital.

Kudos to Brian Yokers!

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After a construction worker died and four others suffered personal injury in a construction accident in Brooklyn, NYC, in 2011, the negligent “special instructor” who failed to perform crucial safety inspections on the site of the accident had his license revoked by the New York City Department of Buildings on Friday.

Back in 2011, Steven Schneider, an engineer, was hired as a special safety inspector on the construction site of a 14-unit condo building in Brighton Beach. As part of his duties Schneider was required by the code to perform structural tests such as testing of steel and masonry construction, structural stability and underpinning of adjacent buildings. Investigations show that Schneider never performed any of these tests and therefore didn’t notice that construction workers  had improperly poured concrete on unstable steel structures. This gross negligence led to the collapse of several floors of the building.  During the accident several workers were buried in the debris. Among them was Ivan Lende, a 54 year old worker from the Ukraine who died in the accident. Four of his colleagues were injured. Investigation results also show that Schneider  was unable to provide inspection documentation at many other NYC sites where he had been hired as a safety instructor. Not only did Schneider have his license revoked by the NYC DOB but his case was also referred to the state for “further disciplinary action”.

The DOB also announced Friday the revocation of the plumbing license of Andrew Trombetta. Andrew Trombetta is a master plumber who was involved in the East Village gas explosion that killed two people and injured many others in March 2015. Andrew Trobetta rented his licensed to the unaccredited plumber who installed the illegal hook up that led to the explosion. Earlier this month he was charged with falsifying inspection reports while four other people were charged with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.

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Between 2005 and 2015 claims related to people injured in construction accidents related to falling bricks or other debris in New York City have been decreasing by more than half. This decline is mostly related to the city creating stricter and stricter laws to protect New Yorkers from construction accidents.  Among the laws enacted by the city, one them requires the erection of sidewalk sheds to protect pedestrians from falling debris.  According to a recent article in Crains, there are now 9000 sheds all over the city compared to 3,500 in 2003. Some of these sheds can remain for years as some building owners find it cheaper to pay  a fine and keep the shed rather than paying to renovate the facade of their buildings. Some New Yorkers are complaining that the sheds not only cut off sunlight, create a safety hazard and hurt businesses but also accumulate garbage and serve as a shelter for loiterers. The need for sidewalk sheds or overhead protection, as they are also known at active construction sites in New York is critical to the safety of both workers and the public. The comment in the article that, “And developers may not be inclined to spend on nicer sheds because of the growing cost of settling lawsuits brought under New York state Labor Law 240/241, better known as the scaffold law. The statute holds building owners and contractors 100% liable for any gravity-related accident in which they are at least partially at fault,” misses the point. If it were not for these statutes there would be thousands of serious injuries and fatalities each year in NYC, since to cut costs many construction companies mostly on non-union jobs would cut costs and not be inclined to have any sheds. which was the case when the Labor Law was not strictly enforced. With regard to building owners who install sheds rather than performing needed facade renovation work, the City must start to actively track the issuance of shed permits. An owner should not be issued a permit and fail to commence construction within 90 days of issuance. Escalating fines should be levied against the owner for failing to commence construction. Further, the City must start to ease the antiquated process of filing and approving construction permits. Although it is a difficult situation one must remember that Safety comes first.

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After hearing about multiple complaints of tenants being endangered by construction work in their building often because unscrupulous landlords are trying to push them out and rent at a higher price (see previous blog), the New York City Council today introduced a new package of bills intended to stop these dangerous practices. A total of a dozen bills are pushing for more and quicker enforcement by the NYC Buildings Department. One of the bills proposes the creation of a special unit that would send inspectors to the site within two hours after a complaint of non permitted work is received. Other bills address falsified claims in which the owner pretends the building is vacant when it is not. Tenants advocates are claiming that harassment has reached unbearable levels in gentrifying neighborhoods in Brooklyn and the Lower East Side and that the Department of Buildings is too lenient.

Read more in the New York Times

 

 

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One day before he died in a construction accident, 19 year old Fernando Vanegas told his mom that he was worried about the safety of the construction site after a retaining wall designed to hold back the soil around the base of a building where he was working had almost fallen. The wall fell the day after killing Fernando and badly injuring two other construction workers. The construction site locatedat 656 Myrtle Avenue, near Franklin Avenue, in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn had been previously vacated because of structural problems but in recent months the contractor received a permit for remediation work and the site was reopened. Read more in the New York Times

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656 Myrtle Ave before the collapse of the wall

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NYC explosionA construction worker was critically injured and two others suffered serious personal injury in a gas explosion that rocked the walls of the science lab at John F. Kennedy High School in the Bronx, NYC. 36 year Luigi Barillaro, 38 year old James Intriago and 53 year old Charles Marullo, were all working for the plumbing and heating company Mar-Sal Plumbing & Heating Inc., based on Pitkin Avenue in Ozone Park, Queens, NYC. The company was hired to install a tabletop gas valve as part of a science lab construction project located on the sixth floor of the building. The 3 men had been working all day and the room was filled with gas but they apparently didn’t detect the smell of gas because they had been desensitized to it. At one point Luigi Barillaro lit a match to check if the gas was working, sparking a huge explosion, blowing out the walls and sending debris flying 200 feet.

Barillaro was critically injured and had burns over most his body. He has already undergone multiple skin-grafting surgeries. Intriago and Maruallo were also still in the hospital and being treated for burns to their arms and faces.

The school was issued a full vacate order for the entire building and a safety zone was put in place along some facades. Students who were supposed to start school there on September 9 will have to be temporarily relocated.

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