Construction Worker Injured by Front-End Loader

On a day when construction workers who died on the job were being remembered and on the start of the Department of Buildings' Construction Safety Week, a construction worker was crushed under a front-end loader at site in Staten Island.

According to the Staten Island Advance, the victim had been guiding the loader's operator as it was being backed out of Martha Street and Clove Road at 9:30 p.m. last night. And when the front-end loader moved forward, "the victim apparently tried to grab onto the front-end loader's passenger side ladder to hitch a ride."

However, police said that the "ladder's rungs were slick with rainwater; it seems the victim lost his grip, falling beneath the rear passenger-side tire." The front-end loader weighs about 30,000 pounds and victim is in critical condition with "multiple internal injuries." And the project is a water-pipe replacement projected from the city's Department of Environmental Protection--the city's Department of Design and Construction is overseeing it.

At the special St. Patrick's Cathedral mass for the 13 workers killed in construction accidents, some worried about job losses from shutdowns as well as safety. The head of the Real Estate Board of New York, Steven Spinola, told the Times, "We have the sense that stop-work orders are being done for more than that now. Some contractors have even suggested that stop-work orders are being used as a form of punishment.”