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......

The Buildings Department has partially lifted the stop work order at 246 Spring Street, aka the Trump Soho building at Spring and Varick. On January 14, a construction worker fell to his death while pouring concrete molds on the 42nd floor. A second worker also fell, but was saved by netting around the building. The DOB says workers were allowed to proceed "with interior construction and installation of curtain wall panels on the lower......

Photo of a crane on the Upper East Side by Stacyinthecity on flickr In an attempt to prevent another deadly crane accident, the city's Department of Buildings announced changes yesterday to keep construction "sites safe." The agency laid out several new regulations requiring oversight by city inspectors or a project engineer. Buildings Commissioner Patricia Lancaster said that the new rules are "something that should have been happening" before. The engineer that applied for the......

After a number of high-profile construction incidents in the past few years, the Buildings Department announced last month they would introduce stricter safety measures for high-rise construction. Here are some of those incidents: There are terrible construction incidents at sites of all sizes, union or non-union. Last Wednesday, a worker died while digging a foundation in East New York (a neighboring wall collapsed on him). And a 2006 study showed non-union workers are at greatest......

Rescue workers search for survivors at the 305 East 50th Street by Toykin Chin/AP; lower photograph by chucknyc88 on Flickr After a 19-story construction crane collapsed in Turtle Bay and fell towards other buildings, firefighters and other rescue workers are searching for survivors in the rubble. At least four people - all construction workers, Brad Cohen, Aaron Stephens, Anthony Mazza and Wayne Binder - are dead and many more are injured. It's believed two......

At an East New York construction site, a neighboring building's wall partially collapsed, killin one of the workers yesterday morning. The construction site was for a commercial building at 791 Glenmore Avenue, the neighboring building was a residence at 795 Glenmore. The workers had been digging a foundation at 791, when 795's wall became compromised. Buildings Commissioner Patricia Lancaster said there was "evidence of shoddy work conditions" and that the wall should have been shored......

There are some residual delays on Metro-North this morning after yesterday's East Harlem building collapse that led to the suspension of all service in and out of Grand Central. The trains' speed restrictions were lifted at 6:30 a.m. and there may be 5-10 delays. A crowd formed in Grand Central as commuters waited out the suspension or devised alternate routes to get home as the New Haven, Hudson and Harlem lines were all down. But......

Today's high winds may be to blame for a construction worker's death in Fort Greene. Around 10AM, the FDNY tells WNBC that a "construction worker had been working on the 13th floor when are large gust of wind picked up the scaffold he was standing on and blew him over the edge and on to a setback at street level." The other worker, who was knocked from the 13th floor scaffolding to the 10th floor,......

The tragic death of a construction worker at the Trump Soho building has put the spotlight on the spotty history of a contractor on the project. On Monday afternoon, a worker, Yuriy Vanchytskyy (pictured below), fell 42 stories to his death when the molds he and other workers were pouring concrete into broke, causing a collapse into lower floors. The NY Times notes that another worker, also working for subcontractor DiFama Concrete, died when he......

Photograph of the Trump Soho this morning by Riccardo Sinti Work has been stopped at the Trump Soho construction site, the day after an accident caused one worker to fall 42 stories to his death. The FDNY says the workers had been filling wooden forms (one was a 20-foot-square section) with wet concrete when molds broke. Assistant Chief Thomas Galvin explained that the molds collapsed from the 42nd floor to the 40th, leaving a......

Photograph of an injured worker being unloaded from the construction bucket from reader Nick Sonderup There are reports that a crane lost its load of concrete beams at Spring and 6th Avenue. The beams hit the building and sidewalk scaffolding and people are trapped. One fatality is being reported. Photograph of workers on the sidewalk pointing by from stconrad on Flickr The reports indicate the accident occurred at a building under contraction at 246......

The architect severely injured when 14,000 pounds of steel fell from a crane and on top of a construction trailer at a lower Manhattan site was moved out of the intensive care unit yesterday. Robert Woo, who had been working on the Goldman Sachs headquarters project on Murray Street, had been inside the trailer when the debris fell and trapped inside last Friday. Woo underwent surgery on Sunday to insert pins into his back.......

The architect who was in the construction site trailer crushed by 14,000 pounds of steel that fell 25 stories from a crane may never walk again. Doctors believe Robert Woo was likely paralyzed; his mother said, "He might not walk again...I've been telling him he's lucky to be alive." It is amazing Woo is alive - seeing photographs of the site, it's incredible he survived - but given the amount of construction and development......

The scaffolding around an East 66th Street building that collapsed and left one brother dead and another critically injured had a number of previous violations. The Daily News reports that the scaffolding had been cited 10 times in June, and the "violations included orders to repair a safety railing and the main roof, provide padding for workers and adjust an overload detection device." Brothers Edgar and Alcides Moreno were moonlighting for City Wide Window Cleaning......

A novel twist on the bar-neighbor dispute: A Tribeca bar claims the upstairs resident has prevented them from doing business. A lawsuit filed by Smith and Mills, a bar that opened on N. Moore Street back in May, reveals that Victoria Hillstron apparently: - Called the police and Department of Buildings to report "false" building code violations. - "stood in front of plaintiff's establishment to prevent construction from taking place" - Told "patrons not to......

Architect Robert Scarano, who has been charged with violating city building standards at 32 properties, has an ally at the Department of Buildings. The Daily News is reporting that Patricia Lancaster, the department's commissioner, hid Scarano's mistakes, signing a stipulation in which she promised not to report Scarano to any regulatory agency that could revoke his license. The News article is part of its I-Team Special Investigation unit. Reporter Brian Kates explains that Lancaster promised......

Yesterday's gusting winds caused quite a bit of damage besides providing more winter chill. Building scaffolding was knocked over in many places, a tree pinned a man in NJ to the ground, and windows and/or debris fell from two Manhattan skyscrapers, hitting pedestrians. Winds were reported to be at least 40MPH, with gusts at 50MPH, yesterday (wind advisory was in effect until this morning at 4AM). The Buildings Department had asked property owners and construction......

How windy is it today? So windy that windows are popping out of the rather new New York Times building at West 41st Street and 8th Avenue. What's the over-under on windows falling out of other new construction? The wind advisory is in effect until 7AM tomorrow. The Department of Buildings has asked "property owners, builders and contractors to secure all materials that could come loose due to the high winds, such as scaffolding......

Kudos to The Real Deal for coaxing DUMBO-based designer Robert Scarano out of the shadows. One of the city's most reviled architects, Scarano has been scrutinized by Department of Buildings for his safety and zoning violations. Following a summer outcry, the agency issued stop-work orders on some Scarano sites. He's even being investigated by the NYS Department of Education, which oversees licensed architects, but there is currently no record of disciplinary action. Overseeing a whopping......

Last night, an unoccupied five-story hotel at 22 West 24th Street collapsed; no injuries were reported. The former La Semana Hotel "fell into itself leaving a giant, although relatively tidy, pile of rubble," according to the Post. Witnesses said the 8PM collapse sounded like a bomb explosion and that "floor by floor, the building simply gave in." A fire official told the NY Times, "If this happened during the daytime, during a workday when......

More than 200 people found themselves homeless last night after they were evicted from an enormous industrial building at 17-17 Troutman St. in the Ridgewood section of Queens, with Bushwick, Brooklyn just across the street. The loft residents were told to leave by the Department of Buildings and signs were posted saying that the building was "imminently perilous to life." Fire and building inspectors also cited numerous violations in the fire code and evidence......

Reader Austen took some photographs of an injured man being lifted from an Upper West Side construction site. A firefighter and the injured man, who is strapped on a board, is being hoisted by a crane to the ground level. The site is at Amsterdam and West 77th, where the Dakota stables once stood but where, after a fight with preservationists, condos will soon rise. It's unclear what caused the man's injury, but the......

There are many questions surrounding Saturday's Deutsche Bank building fire that took the lives of two firefighters. Were firefighters using outdated information? WABC 7 says that a FDNY report, which is used by fire commanders for planning how they will attack the fire, indicated that the building had 38 floors (when it was really 26) and that the standpipe was working (it wasn't connected). Did the FDNY ignore post-9/11 advice? The NY Times reports that......

Last month, when hundreds of tenants had to be evacuated from apartment buildings following the collapse of the retaining wall at a neighboring construction site, people suspected that the new development's dynamite blasting may have caused the collapse. Now, the City Council is proposing to dramatically limit the time builders can use explosives at sites. City Council Speaker Christine Quinn admitted that existing laws around construction blasting are "not very good." The Council's new......

After a few days of delays, Vincent and Cheryl Pierce were finally able to pick up the Moondance Diner, the Soho standby, and move it back to LaBarge, Wyoming. The diner closed earlier this year after the landlords decided to transform the corner of Sixth Avenue and Grand Street into luxury condos. Developer Extell donated the diner to the American Diner Museum, which then sold the structure to the Pierces for $7,500. The diner's......

The National Weather Service has confirmed that an EF-2 tornado touched down in Bay Ridge this morning. That category of tornado has winds between 111 to 135 miles per hours, and roofs were blown off buildings and trees fell on top of cars and in the middle of roads. A resident told NY1, "I saw a mass of just leaves turning and it was just dark, like a dark mass. I was afraid and......

A safety bar on Coney Island's Polar Express ride broke, causing a 15-year-old girl to be thrown from the ride. Lanique Watts was knocked unconscious (but regained consciousness by the time she got to the hospital), and one witness told the Daily News, "She fell out the car and just rolled down the hill. Everyone started panicking. It looked pretty bad. She was bleeding." She added that a worker had checked all the safety......

A Carnival cruise ship bumped a West Side pier at around 7:30AM this morning. The ship, the 895-foot Carnival Victory, suffered some damage to its bow and now Department of Buildings is investigating whether the dock at 12th Avenue and 56th Street is damaged as well. There is a two-story dock used for parking at the pier, which you can see on WCBS 2's helicopter footage. The West Side Highway was partially closed so emergency......

Seething over their many, ignored complaints about new construction at 808 Columbus Avenue, residents of Park West Village held a rally to demand an investigation. All 280 apartments at one Park West building, 784 Columbus, were evacuated when a retaining wall collapsed at the 808 site on Wednesday night. However, there were a number of calls to the Department of Buildings from 784 residents, complaining that the building was shaking as workers blasted in......

Residents of 784 Columbus Avenue are saying "I told you so" as the Department of Buildings continues its investigation into the retaining wall collapse at 808 Columbus Avenue. Residents at 784 have been complaining about the new constructions for some time and detailed how they've been wearing earplugs and noise-canceling headphones. A wooden retaining wall at the new construction site had been shoring up the land next to 784 Columbus; when the wall collapsed......