Seattle Injury Blog
The seattletimes.com website reported in an article on February 19, 2009 that an ironworker was crushed to death at a construction site on the Microsoft Redmond campus at 4480 154th Place Northeast, off 156th Avenue Northeast. According to witness reports, the ironworker was attempting to set a rebar formation that had just been cut from a crane into cement when it fell onto him. The iron worker was tied to the rebar formation when a support gave way underneath him. An ironworker who was helping guide the rebar escaped unscathed.
Jim Boye, Redmond police spokesman, said, “The crane operator is devastated. He witnessed the whole thing.”
CPR attempts, as well as the use of a defibrillator, were all useless, and the ironworker was pronounced dead at the scene.
Work at the construction site has come to a standstill while the Washington work related death is investigated.
Construction sites are dangerous by nature; however, there are certain factors that increase that inherent hazard. One of the leading causes of construction related deaths is being struck by objects. About 75 percent of struck by fatalities involve heavy equipment used in construction work such as trucks or cranes. According to Department of Labor statistics, the number of workers fatally struck by a vehicle was at a seven-year high in 1998.
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