New cellphone footage shows the frightening moments after a bundle of rebar fell on a group of workers at a Brickell construction site, as the investigation into the accident was underway Thursday.
The video shows workers rushing to help those injured just before noon Wednesday at the project called 830 Brickell.
The workers are seen trying to get to an area below where one person is seen lying down, while another worker comes to in to offer aid.
Miami Fire Rescue rushed those injured - six in all - to Jackson Memorial Hospital's Ryder Trauma Center, with conditions ranging from serious to critical.
“The information that has been relayed to me right now is that all of them are going to make it fine,” Asael Marrero, who runs the Miami Building Department, said Thursday.
The general contractor running the project, Civic Construction, and its head, William Real, said that five of the workers injured are already back at home and he expected the sixth person, who broke his foot, to be home Thursday night.
When it comes to the accident that got them hurt Marrero said his team was at the site along with OSHA and the contracting firms.
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“Hopefully, it doesn’t take weeks to get to the bottom of this,” Marrero said. “A crane was actually hoisting a sheer wall reinforcing cage and that experienced a failure and that particular cage which is full of rebar toppled from a vertical position on down to the slab below and unfortunately on to several construction workers."
The workers who are putting up the 57-story office tower are employed by G and E Florida Contractors.
NBC 6 found that G and E was cited by OSHA in July for alleged safety violations involving fall protection procedures. Its safety manager said that he would speak to NBC 6 about their look into the accident but we haven’t heard back from him.
The crane company on the job was identified as Morrow Equipment, which settled an OSHA violation in 2018. They have not responded to our request for comment. OSHA officials would only say that they have an investigation underway.
The work has been suspended at the site for now.
"We at the building department have issued what’s called a stop work order withholding all construction work on this particular site and we will not be lifting this particular stop work order until three particular criteria are met," Marrero said.
When it comes to that, Civic Construction’s Real said that the engineers did their initial inspections at the site and didn’t find any trouble in the two areas the city building department needs assurances about. OSHA also has to give the green light as well.
Real said the priority is the workers and it was unfortunate they were injured but thankfully not seriously.
