Three maintenance workers were hurt when part of their work platform collapsed and fell about three stories Tuesday morning.
The workers were shoring up the brick mortar on the outside of a 19-story building near Cheesman Park in Denver when the incident occurred. The men had been working at the Huntington House Apartments at 11th and Race for about a month, but on Tuesday, the scaffold that they were on fell sideways, 7NEWS reported.
The men rode the scaffold down then side of the building and when it crashed onto the pavement, the men were knocked off and fell to the ground, firefighters said. Two of the men were found on the ground with head wounds. A third man became disoriented and walked away with visible cuts and scrapes, firefighters said.
"The very fortunatte thing is they were able to ride it to the point of impact. I think that certainly assisted them. Had they fallen off and taken the full fall from three stories it could have had a very different outcome," said Denver Fire Department spokesman Lt. Phil Champagne.
The workers were treated at the scene and then taken to Denver Health Medical Center. Their conditions were not released.
The general contractor on the project is Restruction Corporation, but it's not exactly clear if the men worked for Restruction or for another subcontractor. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigates workplace accidents and will look into the cause of the collapse.
"There were in the process of deconstructing one of the scaffolds, taking in down, but it had become destabilized as a result of the deconstruction process and did collapse with three parties on board," Champagne said.
The incident occurred just before 11 a.m. A Denver fire crew just happened to be training at a building across the street when they heard a loud metallic crash.
"It sounded like a dump truck dumping scrap iron in the middle of the street. So we came out to investigate and came down here and found the scaffold had already fallen and there were two people laying on the ground bleeding from their heads," said Fire Capt. Burke.
They were at the scene seconds later and treated the men before the ambulances arrived.
