Houston, TX — At least one worker was sent to the hospital earlier this month after an construction-related accident at the site of the new Kirby Grove building near Levy Park. It appears that at least two window installers were injured after their scaffolding fell, sending one of them plummeting to the ground 6 floors below.
This was on Monday, October 5, 2015 around 12:00 p.m.
Several window installers were using a cherry picker bucket truck and some scaffolding to work on the newly-constructed buildings that day. As two of the men were on some scaffolding, working, something went wrong and the scaffolding broke free and fell.
They ere about 6 floors up at the time. One man fell to the ground and had life-threatening injuries. He was rushed to a nearby hospital and was later identified as a 46-year-old Hispanic male. The other worker was able to grab onto something and pull himself inside the building, but was still injured.
Apparently, this is being investigated by OSHA as well as local officials in Houston.
Map of the Area
Commentary:
It seems like the news hasn’t really given a lot of thought to this accident, which is a shame, because it sounds like one of the workers was really seriously hurt.
Does anyone know more about what happened here? Who were these workers employed by? Did they have the right kind of fall protection gear or harnesses, as required by OSHA? Does their employer have a clean history with OSHA, or do they have a record of safety violations and citations? These are all relevant questions that ought to be asked by the news reporters, but for some reason, aren’t.
There are too many work accidents that happened in the state of Texas each week, but only a fraction of them are talked about in the news. What with our laws protecting employers to such a high degree, I really think this obscurity and anonymity leads to unsafe workplaces because there’s no sense of public exposure and, ergo, accountability.
— Grossman Law Offices
