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Sandra Yi Reporting A man was trapped and seriously injured Friday morning when scaffolding collapsed at a construction site. The cause may have been worker error. Firefighters worked quickly, but cautiously to rescue the victim.
Construction crews are remodeling a Nissan Dealership near 800 South and West Temple, in Salt Lake City. The project manager told me that when the scaffold collapsed, about a thousand pounds of wood planks fell on top of the victim. The victim laid still as firefighters worked cautiously to pull him out from underneath the pile of lumber.
Dennis McKone, Salt Lake City Fire Dept: "He was alert and talking with them the whole time."
The broken and mangled scaffold also posed a problem for the heavy rescue team. They worked for more than an hour before the victim was brought down in a gurney and flown to the hospital.
Dennis McKone, Salt Lake City Fire Dept: "It's very tedious because of the fact that all that lumber was on top of him, so the scaffolding was broken and bent, so it took a long time to stabilize the area before we could get the gentleman off."
The construction worker was on the second level of the scaffold, about 16 feet off the ground when it began to collapse. Witnesses heard the scaffold creak, and then they heard the victim trying to run away.
Kevin Cameron, Construction Project Manager: "They realized something was going wrong, so one employee went one direction and escaped injury, the other went directly under where the scaffold went down."
Project Manager Kevin Cameron says the workers were dismantling the scaffold when it collapsed. The accident is under investigation, but Cameron offered this explanation.
Kevin Cameron, Construction Project Manager: "It appears that one of the employees may have removed a piece of brace that was an important part of the structural integrity of the scaffolding."
The reason is unclear, but Cameron says the subcontractor working on this project is at a loss for words.
Kevin Cameron, Construction Project Manager: "The subcontractor whose employees these are and whose scaffolding this is, they've stressed they trained their employees and work very hard to make sure things like this don't happen."
The victim was taken to the hospital with a broken leg and possible internal injuries. OSHA is now investigating, but the project manager told me he expects construction to continue here, as early as Saturday morning.
