NYC worker dead and 3 hurt after rear wall of building under demolition collapsed
A construction worker died and three others were hturt when thte rear wall of a building under demolition collapsed in Lower Manhattan on Tuesday afternoon, officials said.
The wall of the three-story unoccupied building gave way around 1 p.m., leaving the hardhat crushed beneath the debris, killing him, according to authorities.
“When the wall collapsed, one of the construction workers was trapped by the debris, and two of the workers fell on top of the debris.” FDNY Chief of Department John Hodgens said at a t conference at the scene on Lafayette Street near Canal Street, where Mayor Eric Adams and Fire Department Commissioner Laura Kavanagh went to after the incident.
A fourth worker also was injured in the mishap, officials said.
The hardhat buried in the rubble had to be dug out by firefighters, who were at the scene in under 4 minutes, the chief said.
The critically hurt man was taken to Bellevue Hospital with life-threatening injuries and later died.
The three other people who suffered non-life-threatening injuries were treated at the scene, officials said. The workers were employed by RJB Contracting Carting Corp.
“It just happened suddenly,” said a security guard who was working nearby.
“We were all out here” at the time, she told The Post. “There was no noise. It’s like a hole in the building they were working in.
“A lady came out crying and saying there were people in the building.”
The building was slapped with five city Department of Buildings safety violations Feb. 6, according to online records.
According to the DOB, the violations were for: “failure to remove hazardous materials and fixtures prior to the start of the demolition”; “sprinklers removed form the building, out of sequence of the demolition plans”; “tarps unsafely hanging from the scaffold”; “construction shanty not constructed out of fireproof material” and “storing 50 tons of construction material on the first floor, which was overloading the floor.”
Acting DOB Commissioner Kazimir Vilenchik Vilenchik said at the presser that the violations appeared to be connected to the building’s collapse. But the agency later said the incident was not connected to the violations, which have since been fixed and are only “technically” still on the books because “the contractor has not yet filed the appropriate paperwork to close them out.” A hearing on the violations is set for April 13.
A partial stop order had been issued for the site Feb. 7, but work was up and running again Feb. 10 after the violations were fixed, according to a DOB rep.
Tuesday’s death marks the first building construction fatality in the city this year.