A four-story section and roof collapsed on an apartment complex that was under construction on Lake Carolyn Parkway in Las Colinas Wednesday afternoon. The new apartment complex was being built in the rapidly growing Irving, Texas area. At present, it appears that the roof collapsed first, pancaking down onto the floors beneath, but that has not been confirmed.
One worker was injured in the roof collapse and taken to the hospital in serious condition. Fire rescue personnel had to use a ladder to rescue him. The Texas construction accident injury lawyers at Denena Points, PC note that the extent of his injuries and the cause of the roof cave-in have not been disclosed. (Frank Heinz, nbcdfw.com; and myfoxdfw.com, 4/3/14)
Workers are getting injured almost every day in U.S. construction or demolition accidents. On Wednesday morning for example, 4 workers received transport to Atlanta Medical Center with back injures and leg trauma after a deck they were working on collapsed. The deck was attached to a vacant house on Ebenezer Road in Fayette County. Two of the workers were on the Fayette County deck that collapsed. And two others were under it when it fell on them. Reports don’t specify whether the deck separated from the house and then fell or whether a guardrail failure and partial collapse of the planking might have occurred.
Our Texas construction accident injury lawyers have pointed out on other occasions the legal duty of employers to provide a safe working environment for their employees. That includes providing safety equipment, proper training, and notice regarding safe work practices and procedures. But construction workers continue to pile building materials on roofs of partially completed buildings, even though it’s widely recognized by industry safety experts as a major hazard.
And workers, sometimes at the behest of impatient property owners or employers, continue to try and demolish unstable buildings quickly with heavy equipment when they should be taken down carefully by hand. Heavy equipment does make the building fall more quickly, often to deadly effect, as was seen in Philadelphia this past summer when a building being negligently demolished collapsed into a Salvation Army store, killing 6.
Click the link to learn about construction safety practices employers should follow.