13.11.2009
Mast Climber goes down in Boston
A mast climber has collapsed while being dismantled in Boston, Massachusetts yesterday, injuring one of the two men on who had been on the platform.
Two men were removing the mast climber from Faneuil Hall on the corner of Congress and Clinton Streets when it collapsed. One of the men managed to hang on to the platform while the other was thrown out.
The man fell around five to six metres landing on a scaffold over a pedestrian walkway, he was strapped to a stretcher and then lifted down with a fire ladder. The two men were employed by Chapman Waterproofing, which was re-pointing the exterior of the Hall.
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The collapsed mast climber
The injured man was taken to the hospital with what are thought to be minor injuries.
Vertikal Comment
Boston has suffered from mast climber falls before, including a triple fatality in April 2006. The cause is usually down to operator error, involving short cuts taken during the dismantling process. In this case there is no way of knowing exactly what caused the collapse, but it most likely relates to the sequence of wall tie removal.
Kelly Smith
Unfortunnately the workers are typically blamed.
I am a former Chapman Waterproofing employee.
And the major problem is that employees are trained to do the wrong things.
It is done thru positive and negative feedback by the foreman or other supervisors.
It is rampant in the industry.
Chapman Waterproofing also had employees scheduled to work on the scaffolding that had the triple fatality on boylston st. boston.
I was told by workers that were there that the plan was for the workers that removed the critical tie in,to do so and then bring the staging down so Chapman Waterproofing employees to then ride the staging back up to waterproof the opening where the tie in was.
This is not the first time that tie ins have been removed and employees put at risk.
Something that really troubles me is that I was working at a different jobsite that day and my foreman told me he had been contacted and that the company was planning on sending me to another jobsite that day.
I had already made plans to go visit a relative and was going to leave work early that day.
And on my way to that visit I seen the news of the tragedy and knew what must have happened.