While Quizhi’s brother walked away unscathed, another family member, Segundo Huerta, was crushed to death and two other relatives were seriously injured, family members said. Three other laborers suffered minor injuries, fire officials said.
Huerta had been carrying heavy building material up to the third floor when the structure suddenly collapsed, said his brother, José Huerta, who showed up at the site after hearing about the accident.
It took firefighters an hour to free Huerta, 48, who was pronounced dead at the building on East 208th Street in Norwood, fire officials said.
“They were trapped,” said John Esposito, the Fire Department’s chief of special operations.
Rosa Luna, 15, who lives in the building across the street, said she was in the bathroom when she heard a loud bang.
“It was like a whole eruption,” she said.
Esther Gómez, 59, who lives in the area, said she watched as the group of about 10 relatives learned that Huerta had succumbed to his injuries.
“Everyone was crying,” Gómez said. “We were consoling them here.”
Construction is one of the most dangerous industries in the country. In 2017, construction workers accounted for only 4% of the national work force, but made up 19% of the country’s worker fatalities, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
For workers like Huerta, an Ecuadorean immigrant who was not a member of a union, the risks are even higher.
In 2017, Latino workers made up only 10% of the state’s work force but accounted for almost 20% of worker fatalities, according to an annual report from the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, a workers’ safety advocacy group.
The report also said that 92% of the construction workers who died on private work sites in New York City were nonunion.
Ruben Colon, a representative of the New York City & Vicinity District Council of Carpenters union, said a lack of safety training for construction workers is contributing to the fatalities.
The New York City Council voted in May to extend a law requiring employees to complete 40 hours of safety training. Colon said the city is not enforcing it.
“The law has been passed, but it has not been fully implemented,” Colon said. “In the meantime, people are dying.”
The city approved plans for the new four-story residential building in January, according to records from the Department of Buildings. Inspectors visited the property in June after a neighbor filed a complaint with the city about a scaffold at the construction site that extended onto his property. The scaffolding was removed and no violation was issued, records show.
The owner of the building, Atin Batra, and the superintendent of construction, Abazi Okoro, both declined to comment.
José Huerta said the family is heartbroken by the sudden death.
He said his brother arrived in the United States about 19 years ago, and had worked in construction for most of that time. He had never complained about unsafe conditions, José Huerta said.
“Él era bueno,” José Huerta said simply. “He was good.”
This article originally appeared in
.