March 20--City, state and federal investigators are probing the partial collapse of a residential building under construction in Chinatown that left two workers injured, one seriously.
All 120 workers -- including laborers, carpenters and ironworkers -- who were on site at 45 Stuart St. at the time of the collapse have been accounted for, Boston Fire Department spokesman Steve MacDonald said late this morning.
"We still have two in the hospital -- one in very serious condition," he said.
MacDonald said the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and state and city building inspectors are investigating.
The building, which is designed to be 33 stories when it is completed in 2015, had 12 stories this morning when a large amount of "dead load" construction materials on the twelfth floor fell through, pancaked seven floors and came to rest on the fifth floor, MacDonald said.
When the twelfth floor decking buckled from the sheer weight of the material, MacDonald said, the falling debris then sucked up more materials on the 11th floor "and it keeps picking up more weight and momentum. It actually bent some steel up there."
MacDonald said the crane on site was not involved in the collapse, which hinged on the "dead load."
"The crane takes building material and it's hoisted up to the floor at a place where the floor can support it," he said. "It was just a material load and that's what OSHA will investigate. Where were loads placed? Were things strong enough?"
Josie Huff, a resident of the Kensington apartments opposite the structure, said she was on a treadmill in the fitness center when the horror unfolded right in front of her window.
Huff said she saw a massive beam topple right above where one worker was standing high up on the structure.
"I watched the beam break off. The entire scaffolding, everything just came down," Hoff said. "He didn't even know it was coming and all of a sudden the beam came by him."
Then, Hoff said, she saw the worker drop several floors along with the debris.
Hoff said she heard the beam's initial impact, "but believe it or not seconds went by before things started to collapse. It was sort of like slow motion. I'm shocked anyone could even survive it."
MacDonald said when the accident occurred, construction workers were in the early stages of erecting the massive high-rise.
"On the upper floors they're putting the decking in place, they're positioning the steel bars that are going to reinforce the floors," he said. "They're pouring concrete on them."
Now, MacDonald said, workers will begin the cautious process of shoring up the structure, which has a metal framework that is still standing.
"They're going to be using the crane to clear the roof," he said. "Then, once the roof is cleared, the engineers along with some of the workers are going to start at the ground floor and reinforce the area of the collapse up to the fifth floor.
"The fifth floor is where whatever it was that pancaked down from the 12th floor ... all that weight and debris is sitting on the fifth floor, so there's an unusually high weight load on the fifth floor. We're going to start at the ground floor and literally build up support to the fifth floor."
Once the structure is sound enough for workers to clear the debris field, MacDonald said, OSHA will begin its investigation -- a process he said could take "at least a couple days,"
"Right now there's no life hazard. You don't want to create one," MacDonald said of why investigators will move forward cautiously.
Meanwhile, Washington Street has reopened and morning traffic is flowing again past the construction site, which abuts the Glass Slipper and Centerfolds strip clubs, the last remnants of the city's notorious Combat Zone.
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