Workers in hospital after fall
Ministry of Labour investigating Friday incident after workers fall nine storeys on a construction project
Two workers are in hospital after falling nine storeys on a construction project in St. Catharines Friday.
The St. Catharines Fire Department rescued the injured men from the bottom of an elevator shaft and handed them off to Niagara EMS paramedics, after a lunch-hour incident on Towering Heights Boulevard off Glen Morris Drive.
Niagara EMS spokesperson Bryce Brunarski said the first worker was unconscious with multiple fractures, a potential chest injury and a laceration to the head.
Paramedics transported him to nearby Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School on Glen Morris Drive. An Ornge air ambulance helicopter made a modified landing at the school and transported the patient to an out-of-town hospital.
The second man suffered fractures to both forearms, Brunarski said. The worker was conscious and alert after the fall, and was holding the first patient’s head above the water that had collected in the bottom of the elevator shaft while waiting to be rescued.
Paramedics transported the second man by land ambulance CTAS 2 — Canadian Triage and Acuity Scale, Level No. 2, when the patient’s injuries are a potential threat to life, limb or function — to a local hospital.
St. Catharines Fire Department deputy fire chief Dave Upper said firefighters were called to the scene at 12:44 p.m. and found the men with “critical injuries.”
“They were assembling forms for a concrete pour,” Upper said. “Something failed, and the two of them fell in the elevator shaft seven floors from above, and then another two floors below grade.
“They were in the bottom of the elevator shaft, and we had to extricate them and pass them up to Niagara EMS so they could provide patient care.”
Upper said the fire department’s technical rope rescue unit was activated but wasn’t needed.
“We had enough access that our crews could make their way into the bottom of the shaft,” Upper said. “It wasn’t that far that we couldn’t pass them up and out to the paramedics.
The Ministry of Labour has been called in to investigate the incident. Shilpa Kotecha, a spokesperson for the ministry, said the employer is believed to be Homestead Landing.