Philadelphia construction lift topples, sending worker falling 125 feet
By Maryclaire Dale, APMonday, October 12, 2009
Man falls 125 feet in Pa. platform lift accident
PHILADELPHIA — A man operating a construction lift to work on a church roof drove over a sidewalk grate, slowly toppling the crane-like machine and sending him 125 feet to the ground.
The worker and a woman were taken to a hospital, said a Philadelphia Fire Department supervisor who declined to give his name. A hospital spokesman would not release information on the patients’ condition.
The man was completing maintenance work to the church roof when the lift rode over a grate that slowly gave way, witnesses said. The lift slowly started to fall, grazing the top corner of a residential building, then knocking down a traffic light and light pole.
“It took forever for him to fall over,” said Robert Lee, a construction worker on a nearby project. “He didn’t scream. He was just trying to work the controls.”
Lisa Callahan was in a neighboring building and said, the crash “sounded like an earthquake.”
“It was like a boom and then it sounded like a lot of things just dropping and breaking. And then we heard a woman screaming,” said Gayle Sproul, an attorney whose office is across the street.
A car parked on the street was hit by debris, breaking the windshield. Sproul said two people were in the car but she didn’t know whether they were injured.
“It’s really lucky that it’s Columbus Day because the traffic is really limited,” she said. “The angle of the way it came down it would have just flattened anything on the sidewalk.”
Sproul said she noticed the lift, with its arm extended, when she came to work. Two workers on the platform appeared to be cleaning the parapets on a church.
|
October 12, 2009: 4:39 pm
I was on the phone with my neighbor who was walking under the lift as the problems were occuring and he said he ha to go very fast. He called back immediately and described what he saw, but he explained the incident with more detail. He said “It sounded as if someone put gravel in a blender” then he took notice that the tire on the lift had failed and it was flat. That was when the grating gave way that the tire was positioned over. the actual fall itself sounded as if it were complete mayhem. He said that the worker struck a truck when he fell to the ground and that there was no way he could have survived a fall like that. It started slowly but as the lift built momentum the worker had no chance. For fear that a family member of the worker might read this, I would never want to get too graphic. He said it was by far the most dramatic thing that he ever witnessed in person. |
Kevin Hubbard