Steel beam falls from construction site
A large steel beam fell from a 51-story construction site above South Station Wednesday afternoon, shattering multiple windows and alarming the public on its way down, officials said.
“A beam or a piece of steel from an upper floor, very close to the top of the building, became dislodged, fell down, and lodged in floor nine,” said Boston Fire Deputy Chief James Greene.
The ninth floor acts as the roof of the commuter rail platform, and Greene said “luckily it lodged” into the area and bent on impact.
“It definitely had a lot of force coming down and you can see what it did,” he said.
Greene said no one was injured and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating how the beam originally became dislodged.
“Thank god there are no injuries,” said Greene. “It was a busy afternoon.”
A construction worker at the site who did not want to be named said the impact was “an explosion of sound.” Before the beam slammed down onto the ninth floor, he said it broke through the two floors above.
“Two feet over and the thing would have come into South Station,” he said. “It would have been a disaster. We are so lucky.”
An eyewitness who works on the 11th floor of a nearby building said she looked out the window around 1:45 p.m. to see “something large” fall from the tower atop South Station. The construction workers ran toward the area where the object fell, which the eyewitness said looked to be near a train platform.
“It was a huge fall,” the eyewitness said during a phone interview Wednesday. “It was out of the ordinary, and then I looked out the window to see if could see anything, and that’s when I saw [construction workers] running.”