The Atlanta Fire Department said a second major collapse has happened at the parking deck that partially collapsed Friday.
The collapse on Friday injured six construction workers at a parking deck being constructed for the new Emory Hospital Midtown.
On Saturday, a worker was injured and sent to Grady Memorial Hospital after another part of the deck fell. Workers were at the sight Saturday to clean up and try to shore up the building. OSHA was at the scene at the time of the second collapse.
Fire officials said the worker was standing on a big concrete beam when it collapsed, plunging about 10 stories. The worker fell, suffering serious but not life-threatening injuries.
“A worker who was on the beam and the part that collapsed actually came down a few floors with the concrete that fell down,” Sgt. Cortez Stafford said. “He suffered some major injuries on his lower extremities.”
Stafford said some workers struggled to try to get him out from under the debris but firefighters finally were able to remove him from the building.
W. Peachtree Street is closed between Pine and Linden Ave.
Channel 2′s Michael Seiden was at the scene, where the city has now ordered the construction company to stop its work until investigators can determine what is going on.
“Right now, the parking structure is compromised,” Stafford said. “There’s no one else inside and we moved people back and we’ve closed off streets.”
Channel 2′s Nicole Carr Friday learned that this is the second incident in recent years in Midtown involving worker injuries or death in a project by the same company.
Baston Cook Construction tweeted that they were responsible for constructing one of Atlanta’s largest parking facilities in June. The deck at Emory Midtown is slated to be 16 floors with 3,000 parking spaces and 16,000 square feet of retail space.
Records show that the company paid more than a a$12,000 fine for a 2017 accident that killed a 20-year-old construction worker at a Midtown hospital site. At the time, the company’s president told us it involved concrete placement.
A decade earlier, two of the company’s construction workers were unconscious at the bottom of a 25-foot-deep manhole in Forsyth County. One died and the other was hospitalized.
In an informal settlement, records show the company paid a $5,000 OSHA fine tied to a training violation.
The priority in Midtown now includes figuring out the status of what’s attached to the deck.
Carr reached out to the company, but hasn’t heard back.
in a separate division, the construction company is also working with OSHA investigators in Virginia after a crane collapse at a downtown Charlottesville construction site earlier this year.
The first accident happened at the new Emory Midtown Hospital parking lot on West Peachtree Street at Linden Avenue around 11 a.m Friday. Firefighters said pre-fabricated wall of the 11th floor collapsed onto the 10th floor.
Six workers were injured in that collapse, including one who was trapped under the rubble. NewsChopper 2 was over the scene live as firefighters pulled the injured worker out from under debris and loaded him onto a backboard. Crews used a crane to lower him to the ground.
The worker sustained injuries to the legs and was taken to the hospital. The other workers were taken to the hospital with minor injuries.
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