There was a construction accident near Ground Zero today. Goldman Sachs is putting up a 46 or 48 story building right near the area. Around 12pm when I'm having lunch and listening to 880 in our shanty they had breaking news of the story. A crane was hoisting several hundred pounds of metal stud when the crane snapped and fell onto one of the construction trailers. On the radio I heard that one worker was critically injured. However, my dad is working on that same job. At first I didn't hear where it was other than Ground Zero. I asked my sub-foreman if they said Goldman Sachs and he said "Yeah, your father's on that job, right?" I told him yeah and immediately started calling him. I called him and called him for 15 minutes straight without an answer, then I called my mom, told her what happened and asked her if she heard anything. Then I kept on calling my dad again. Still no answer. When I got up to the floor where I was working I asked one of the nurses if I could use one of their phones. FINALLY, I got in touch with him. Everything was fine by him. I told him I was never so happy to hear his voice! I never had such an empty feeling in my stomach during the time I was trying to call him. Thank God he's OK. I'm hoping for the best for the worker that was injured. He (the worker) is a concrete tester for new construction jobs that are going up.

Here's a picture my dad took. You can see where the trailer split in half.
Link to picture

A few years ago when I wasn't in this industry I really didn't think anything of the construction accidents that happened. But since I started, it definitely makes me realize that it can happen at any time to anybody.

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Last edited by danlaxx1 on Dec-14-2007 at 23:16

WOW I'm really glad your pops is ok. It sucks somebody else got hurt though. You picture didn't show up....curious to see it.

Yesterday in Jamaica Queens one of my co-workers almost lost his life. There was a power outage and our emergency department was working in a bunch of manholes. A couple of feeders were out and a few more were about to go because of the overload so they were rushing to get the problem fixed so more shit didn't blow up (kinda like what happened in Astoria last year but on a much smaller scale.) Anyways my co-worker was standing over the manhole and the control center gave out a warning to the emergency crew foreman....well there was a communication problem somewhere along the line and none of the workers were informed that they were going to re-energize the feeder. Well they did and two feeders blew up and sent this poor kid about 6 feet back and his hardhat went flying another 30 feet. If he would have been inside that hole he would be dead right now. The only thing that saved this kid was the fact that he had all his protection on (safety glasses, hardhat, fire mask.) I saw his safety glasses this morning at our safty briefing and there was tiny pieces of copper shrap metal stuck right where his eyes were.....he would have been blind right now if it wasn't for them.

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Last edited by vtec junkie on Dec-15-2007 at 01:06

dam thats a crazy experience
that whole area is too dense for all that construction
and not even that area alot of nyc has all these new buildings/condos going up
and sometimes i dont like walking under the awnings they put up cause iam affraid that same thing might happen, some craine or piece of machinery will come down and clock me in the head
the city is scary with all that stuff
glad your pops is ok
i went threw that shit on 9/11 but only my parents were tryin to get in touch with me cause i used to go to school by there

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Glad your Dad's OK Dan and I'm glad Brians friend is OK too..The sooner NYC establish a legitimate Health and Safety Executive the better,, instead of Mob ruled organisations that allow corners to be cut and our lives to be put in jeopardy..Don't get me started..

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quote:

Originally posted by steven-neil Glad your Dad's OK Dan and I'm glad Brians friend is OK too..The sooner NYC establish a legitimate Health and Safety Executive the better,, instead of Mob ruled organisations that allow corners to be cut and our lives to be put in jeopardy..Don't get me started..

non-mobbed-up workers unions are just as bad. In society today the biggest effect of workers unions is to make US corporations less competitive. All they are worried about is increase hourly wages while they continually want to reduce productivity. it's no wonder things like this happen. if half of your day is spent sitting around watching your co-workers drink coffee how the hell could you ever be proficient?

and if anyone thinks that has nothing to do with a crane snapping, just think about it. that crane was put together by a bunch of guys who work 4 hours a day while on the jobsite for 10 hours. The crane was inspected by someone else who pushes 8 buttons a day and gets paid 25-40 dollars an hour (im pretty sure the crane should be inspected daily, which makes it even worse). The problem is complacency. If there was a greater risk of losing their job, workers would do a better job. Every other industry works that way. Don't get me wrong, i'm not saying that union workers as a whole are lazy or poor workers, but competition drives efficiency; unions as a whole are hardly efficient.

Last edited by jerZ07002 on Dec-15-2007 at 02:57

quote:

Originally posted by jerZ07002 non-mobbed-up workers unions are just as bad. In society today the biggest effect of workers unions is to make US corporations less competitive. All they are worried about is increase hourly wages while they continually want to reduce productivity. it's no wonder things like this happen. if half of your day is spent sitting around watching your co-workers drink coffee how the hell could you ever be proficient? and if anyone thinks that has nothing to do with a crane snapping, just think about it. that crane was put together by a bunch of guys who work 4 hours a day while on the jobsite for 10 hours. The crane was inspected by someone else who pushes 8 buttons a day and gets paid 25-40 dollars an hour (im pretty sure the crane should be inspected daily, which makes it even worse). The problem is complacency. If there was a greater risk of losing their job, workers would do a better job. Every other industry works that way. Don't get me wrong, i'm not saying that union workers as a whole are lazy or poor workers, but competition drives efficiency; unions as a whole are hardly efficient.

You have good point.......union workers are some of the laziest, whining bitches I have ever worked with.....MOST of them just bitch about working and not getting paid enough but the way I see it is those are the same people that never had any other job in their life. They were hired into the union right out of high school and don't have a fucking clue what real work is. It's a shame because they fuck it up for the true hard workers in the company (example - company starts hiring contractors to do the work because production is down) and next thing you know there is no overtime. It's a big fucking problem James, let me tell you from first hand experience.

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quote:

Originally posted by vtec junkie You have good point.......union workers are some of the laziest, whining bitches I have ever worked with.....MOST of them just bitch about working and not getting paid enough but the way I see it is those are the same people that never had any other job in their life. They were hired into the union right out of high school and don't have a fucking clue what real work is. It's a shame because they fuck it up for the true hard workers in the company (example - company starts hiring contractors to do the work because production is down) and next thing you know there is no overtime. It's a big fucking problem James, let me tell you from first hand experience.

I had words like lazy and slob in my initial post, but i edited those word out because i know how sensitive some people on here can be. Actually, you should be even more pissed because in dangerous jobs those same lazy workers are risking your life!

::hides and waits for dan to respond::

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quote:

Originally posted by jerZ07002 I had words like lazy and slob in my initial post, but i edited those word out because i know how sensitive some people on here can be. Actually, you should be even more pissed because in dangerous jobs those same lazy workers are risking your life!

Hey you didn't offend me because I 'm one of the few that doesn't fall into that category.......that being said there are plenty of fat, good for nothing slobs working in unions (hence my location lol.) The good thing about Con Ed though is they take safty really seriously. We have safty inspections conducted every day and if we fail we get written up which can lead to loss of wages and stuff.....so for the most part everybody is on top of their game when it comes to safty and if something is fucked up, anybody can call off a job until the problem is fixed. This particular accident is being investigated and somebody is gonna get burned hard for sure.

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if you dont know the story behind it, thats actually a pretty cool picture!

glad to hear he's ok

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Thanks for everyone's support. It was def a nerve-racking time!

As far as peoples' union criticisms...
To say that the only thing they're concerned about is increased wages and reduced productivity is a load of shit. I can't speak for other unions but the one that I'm in is always trying to INCREASE productivity to be able to compete with non-union contractors and to be safe doing it. Accidents are far more prevalent at non-union jobs than union jobs.

I'm proud to be a part of a union. And yes, I am sensitive. This union has done so much for my family over the years. My father, uncle, and mother's step-father worked damn hard to be able to support their families.

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Did a bit of research on this and found out that in NYC alone there are an average of 22 construction deaths a year...Although there has been a drop in deaths this year,,serious accidents and serious injuries have risen by 83%...These figures are appauling...

I've been trying to find out information about the crane accident with no luck...

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