Personal Injury Law

Construction Worker Dies in 42-Story Fall in SoHo

According to a New York Times Report, a construction worker who was pouring concrete at a condominium hotel in SoHo fell 42 floors to his death on Monday, January 14th. A second man was also thrown from the 42nd floor, but he was caught in a safety net that extends outward from the 40th floor. Authorities claim the construction accident occurred when a wooden mold used to set the concrete collapsed. The cause of the collapse was unclear, and remained under investigation Monday by the Fire Department and the city?s Department of Buildings.

Assistant Fire Chief Thomas Galvin said the worker who died was tamping wet concrete in wood molds, constructed of plywood and two-by-four beams. The wood molds collapsed, he said, and fell from the 42nd floor to the 40th floor, leaving a large gash at the southwest corner of the top of the building. It is unclear why one man was not stopped by the safety netting or by an even wider platform that is part of the structure on the lower floor, while a 2nd man was.

Full post as published by New York Injury Talk Blog on January 23, 2008 (boomark / email).