26.01.2012

Four year old hit by falling scaffold

A mother and four year old daughter suffered injuries after being hit by a scaffold board that fell during the dismantling of a scaffold in Manhattan, New York.

Workers were removing the scaffolding after working on the façade of a building on the Upper East Side of New York, when the scaffold board was dropped from a height of around three metres striking the young girl and knocking her to the ground, although she escaped serious injury.

Rochelle Siskind, the mother, immediately took her daughter to the school paediatrician for a thorough examination and it seems her injuries were limited to cuts and bruises. The scaffold crew apologised to Siskind blaming the accident on a loose screw.
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The scaffold board that fell striking the young girl

Stay Secure Construction, the scaffold company, has been issued with a summons for failing to have the required flagmen on the pavement/sidewalk to divert pedestrian traffic. A supervisor for the company, Dennis Clark said: “Two flagmen were in place before the incident. We’re supposed to have three on a job like that, but we only had two, so we got a summons.”

Siskind’s and other eyewitness contradict him, suggesting that there were no flagmen present. The Department of Buildings is investigating the incident.