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 Posted in Construction Accident

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CPWRNano-enabled construction products usage has been expanding fast but little is know about the potential health dangers of these products for construction workers who are exposed to them.  Because manufacturers are not obligated to disclose that their products  contain nanoparticles it makes it even more difficult for contractors and construction workers to identify these products and to protect themselves from potential injuries.

CPWR, the Center for Construction Research and Training,  has dedicated resources to research these products. Researchers at CPWR have created a  website ( http://nano.elcosh.org/ ) that contains information on over 400 construction products that are probably nano-enabled.

Tomorrow September 23rd at 2:00 pm (Eastern Time)  CPWR will host a 20 minutes webinar to present this new website and the result of their research on nanomaterials used in construction. Participants will learn about the different types of exposures and how to use control technologies and respiratory protection against nanoparticles.  They will also be briefed on the new products trends and will also learn how to navigate the new website hat contains over 450 products and numerous relevant documents. The seminar will be followed by a Q&A session.

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Tenants at many building in New York City and particularly rent-stabilized tenants are being endangered and harassed by negligent property owners that are allowed to start construction work after they asserted that their building was empty when filing with the NYC Department of Buildings.

Despite Mayor de Blasio’s blue print to improve the efficiency of the NYC DOB, and pledge to preserve and create rent stabilized apartment, tenants and some elected officials are complaining that the lack of enforcement has created a climate of lawlessness. A recent article in the New York Times explains  how unscrupulous  landlords and developers are defrauding the DOB with false fillings, endangering the life and safety of tenants and harassing them into leaving their apartments. The author, Mireya Navarro is providing numerous examples of cases where residents complaints were ignored or handled lightly by the Department of Buildings and owners were allowed to continue their work.

The Department of Buildings is aware of the false filling problem and has been working on upgrading their technology.  Among the improvements, the DOB announced that it was about to launch Inspection Ready, a new online tool that is supposed to  dramatically simplify compliance and reduce wait times when scheduling appointments for inspections. The system will include the ability to request and cancel appointments online, as well as view inspection results and documentation.

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The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released the preliminary data from the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI) for  2014.   There where 4,659 fatal work injuries  in 2014.   This is the highest number of fatalities since 2011.

This high number of deaths on work sites is mostly explained by a revitalized economy and a decline in the unemployment rate in 2014. The rate of  workers fatalities stayed the same as the previous  year with 3.3 fatal work injuries per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers. Over the long term, the rate of worker fatalities has been slowly decreasing over the years indicating safer work conditions globally.

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40% of the fatalities were caused by a transportation accident. Among transportation related fatalities, more than half  of them where accidents on roadways. Accidents involving pedestrian workers being struck by vehicles represented the second  largest category of fatal occupational injuries caused by transportation accidents.

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 Two construction workers were injured after they fell from a building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan yesterday afternoon. The construction workers where  working on the $50 million renovation of the World Diamond   Tower  building  on Fifth Avenue  and W. 47th St.   They fell from the second floor mezzanine inside the building.  The FDNY has asked the City Department of Buildings to investigate whether a partial collapse of the mezzanine led to the fall. Read more in  The New York Daily News 

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 The construction accident happened in a famous building of the Diamond District.  Picture courtesy of Google map 

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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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Another construction worker died in New York yesterday. 30 year old Juan Cerezo was doing facade work on a scaffold on the 14th floor when he fell and landed on the sidewalk shed. The fatal accident happened on the Upper East Side of Manhattan at 363 East 76th Street around 4:00 pm yesterday. It is not clear so far if the worker was wearing a safety harness at the time of the accident. Four complaints have been filed against the building’s renovation this year, two for the second-floor scaffolding breaking or not being up to code, according to city records. The man was taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead (read more in DNA).

The boom in construction in New York City has led to a significant increase of workers and non workers being injured or being killed on or nearby construction sites.  A few days ago a 30 year old hard hat died after he fell down an elevator shaft on a construction site in Midtown on the West side of Manhattan.  (see previous blog).

So far this year 12 people died in construction accidents including non construction workers such as pedestrians struck by debris or tenants killed in gas explosions.

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Construction_AccidentAmong all industry sectors in the U.S.,  construction has the highest number of fatal injuries with  more than 800 construction workers dying every year.  A  lot of  research has been done and written on construction safety and health but the challenge is to ensure that  promising research findings become safer practices on construction sites.

Last month, the  American  Journal of Industrial Medicine devoted a special issue on Research to Practice (r2p)  at The Center for Construction Research and Training (CPWR)  covering the following subjects:

  •  Using social marketing to stop construction falls
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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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A construction worker died after he fell down an elevator shaft in New York. The accident happened yesterday at the beginning of the afternoon at the construction site of a future hotel located at 577 9th Avenue near 41st Street in Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan.

According to DNA Info the construction worker  was not wearing a harness at the time of the accident. He was working on the fourth floor near the elevator shaft which, at the time, was just a hole that extended all the way to the ground. He fell in and landed on his back. The man who was 30 years old was transported to the hospital in critical condition. He later died.

A few months ago the general contractor for the construction site, BRF Construction Corp, was fined for failing to secure the site after a construction worker was spotted on a 15 to 20 foot wall without a harness. BRF employed non union workers.

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Last April, 22 year old Carlos Moncayo died in a construction accident in New York because two construction managers put profit over safety.  According to the NY Daily News, on April 6th, Christian Ofusu, an independent engineer assigned to oversee the work on a Ninth Ave site in the Meatpacking district warned Alfonso Prestia, the construction site superintendent, that the site was too dangerous and that it should be shut down. Prestia ignored the engineer’s warning so Ofusu went to voice his concerns to foreman Wilmer Cueva who also refused to stop the work. Moments later, as Ofusu was trying to convince the project manager, Mohamad Sharif to shut down the site, a wall collapsed and crushed Carlos Moncaya to death. Cuevas who works for Sky Materials Corp and Prestia who works for Hartco Consultants Corp have both been indicted on charges of criminally negligent homicide, manslaughter and reckless endangerment.

Yesterday another wall collapsed on a construction site in Nolita, downtown Manhattan, injuring two construction workers (see NY Daily News) and the day before a construction worker was seriously injured after falling two-stories at a construction site in Hudson Yards on the west side of Manhattan (see previous blog).

 

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