Cold hardhat facts
Deaths and injuries up amid Apple building boom
Construction-related deaths have doubled and injuries have surged 17 percent as building booms in the Big Apple.
Eight people have died in construction accidents in the first seven months of the year, compared to four over the same time frame in 2017, according to the city Department of Buildings.
Through July of this year, 469 people were injured in 457 accidents on the job, the DOB says.
The latest construction-related death, according to DOB records, happened inside a West Village residential building at 36 Grove St. A live wire electrocuted a hardhat on July 16.
Four days earlier, a falling piece of scaffolding fatally hit a worker on the head at the International House at 524 Riverside Drive in Morningside Heights.
Federal stats show construction is the most dangerous job in the city. Hardhats accounted for 37.5 percent of work-related deaths in New York City in 2016, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Falling debris has injured at least 50 people, mostly hardhats, at work sites this year, according to the DOB. In one case, a falling scaffold frame knocked out a construction superintendent at an Upper East Side site in July.
At the 400 and 500 blocks of West 33rd Street, where the mega Hudson Yards construction project is underway, there were at least 12 accidents this year.
The cluster of gleaming skyscrapers is part of what DOB spokesman Joseph Soldevere called “an unprecedented construction boom” in the city.
The DOB said last year it issued 168,243 construction permits, an alltime high. There were also a record 45,242 hardhats, according to US Department of Labor figures cited by the DOB.
While courting real-estate bigwigs and shepherding a new wave of development, Mayor de Blasio has also launched safety initiatives.
In October, he approved a requirement for hardhats to log more training hours. And in 2016, Hizzoner moved to quadruple penalties for safety lapses and hire new enforcement inspectors. DOB says it hired 140 inspectors that year, and confirmed to The Post that penalties have gone up.
“We’re taking aggressive action against bad-actor contractors and construction professionals — and calling them out publicly in monthly enforcement bulletins,” Soldevere said in a statement to The Post.