‘ANOTHER MAJOR INCIDENT’
Three workers rescued from old Southie Edison plant collapse
Three workers were injured, one with life-threatening injuries, in a partial building collapse at the old South Boston Edison plant, city officials said.
The man who suffered life-threatening injuries had his lower body trapped under the rubble, said Boston Fire Commissioner Jack Dempsey. All three were transported to different hospitals.
Dempsey said it took several hours for more than a hundred firefighters to free the trapped worker.
Rescuers called a surgeon to the scene at one point, and the doctor wearing surgical scrubs was seen entering the compromised building and exiting sometime later. Dempsey confirmed the surgeon was on scene.
The two men freed earlier sustained non-lifethreatening injuries, said Dempsey.
“I’m angry that we are here again on another worksite with another major incident,” said Boston Mayor Michelle Wu at the scene.
The demolition collapse is the second in Boston in as many months.
Peter Monsini, a secondgeneration demolition expert, was killed as a floor gave way in a catastrophic structural collapse at the Government Center Garage on March 26.
Monsini and the piece of equipment he was operating plunged nine stories to the ground while working to demolish the decking of that garage.
Wu underscored the need for safety at job sites.
“This was an unfortunate accident but it was the result of human error,” said George Regan, a spokesman for Suffolk construction boss John Fish.
Boston police said the department’s homicide unit was investigating. Suffolk DA Kevin Hayden said his office was investigating as well and the DA confirmed and that federal workplace investigators were on scene.
Joe Cappuccio, who works with the “small environmental group” Friends of South Boston Green Space, told the Herald outside the Edison plant he heard the fire engines arrive and came down from his home two blocks away.
“We just had this in downtown crossing,” he said, referencing Government Center tragedy. “We’re supposed to be a union worker state, I mean, what is happening here?!”
Developers are in the midst of preparing to replace the old Edison coal plant with a large residential and commercial development. The project includes demolishing the bulk of the giant puce box that’s visible for miles around.
A resident of the neighborhood, who declined to say his name, said that he’d been monitoring the progress of the demolition. He said he had seen workers climb “like ninjas” to the top of the 200+ foot smokestacks to assemble demolition scaffolding.
While he said the demo work was inherently risky, he said that “it’s hard to conceptualize that one day, boom, this happens.”
The redevelopment of the old plant has moved slowly, with community and political opposition to various aspects dogging Redgate and Hilco Redevelopment Partners, who plan to turn it into a 1.8-million-square-foot development that would include 635 apartments and condos, 960,000 square feet of office and research uses, 80,000 square feet of retail space, 240 hotel rooms and up to 1,214 parking spaces.
The developers didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Last September, as the Herald reported, concerns grew around the demo itself — or, as the developers took to referring to it as, the “deconstruction.” A Hilco high-up said the mantra would be “safety, safety, safety” as locals worried about some Hilco subcontractors’ previous work.
Chaos ensued in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood in spring 2020 when Hilco’s subcontractor imploded an old coal plant, causing dust to billow across the working-class Mexican American neighborhood. Reports from last summer also show a dust cloud billowing from a Hilco coal power plant site in New Jersey.
A Hilco representative at the community meeting did acknowledge the Chicago dust-cloud incident, which she characterized as “very unfortunate.”