Falling cement struck a man who was rescued by Barrie firefighters from an east-end apartment construction site Tuesday evening.
The man, who is in his 30s, had non-life-threatening injuries when taken to Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH) in Barrie.
Deputy Fire Chief Ed Davis said the man was working about 30 feet below ground at 37 Johnson St., when the incident happened.
“He was on a lower-level floor, working on a cement wall or a cement part of the construction, when a pier form or a cement form above him fell on him, or pieces of it fell on him, so he had quite a heavy load that actually fell on (him),” Davis told BarrieToday.
“I believe the cement form or the form that fell on him was only one level up, so it may have been at the 10-foot mark. I would guess (the cement weighed) several hundred pounds," the deputy chief added.
Ontario’s Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development is investigating the incident. A ministry spokesperson told BarrieToday, by e-mail, that “it was reported that a worker was injured while applying a coating on a concrete wall; the ministry has since confirmed that no injury was sustained.”
Davis said the man was alert when firefighters arrived and not trapped by the cement debris.
“I believe the debris had hit him, and it actually didn’t trap him, (but) did land on him, so it may have been distanced from him, so he was removed from the debris when our crews arrived,” he said. “It was in the surrounding area, but it wasn’t exactly on top of him.”
The Barrie Fire and Emergency Service technical rescue team got the man out.
“Once the medics had tended to him initially, we had packaged him in what’s called a Stokes basket — a large stretcher that’s enclosed on the sides by metal framing,” Davis said. “We strapped him into that and they rigged up what’s called a three-to-one haul system.
“For all intents and purposes, that’s a pulley system,” he added. “If you hook up to one or two or three pulleys, it creates a mechanical advantage. So as you pull on the pulleys with light resistance, you can lift a lot more. So for a three-to-one system, if you pull on it with one pound you can lift three pounds.
“We put him in the Stokes basket, hooked him up to our pulley system, rigged that to the truck and then we raised the Stokes basket against an extension ladder,” Davis said. “So we actually pulled the Stokes basket with the patient up the extension ladder to the awaiting medics.”
Barrie Fire was called to 37 Johnson St., at 7:07 p.m., Tuesday, and the man was extricated at 8:15 p.m., Davis said.
A witness at the scene told BarrieToday the man was rushed to RVH via police escort.
City police had no update Wednesday afternoon on the man's condition.
Construction has been ongoing on the Shoreview project, an 11-storey rental apartment tower at 37 Johnson St. — right behind Imperial Towers, which is also 11 storeys — for some time now. Shoreview will have 215 units in its 11 storeys behind Imperial Towers, which has 192, for a total of 407 units.
Starlight Developments, the project’s developer, released a statement to BarrieToday shortly after 2 p.m., Wednesday.
“We can confirm a job-site incident yesterday at 37 Johnson (St.), which resulted in minor injuries,” Starlight spokesperson Danny Roth wrote in an e-mail. “The incident is being investigated by the Ministry of Labour and we are fully co-operating with their review. As the investigation is currently ongoing, we don’t believe it would be appropriate to offer further comment at this time.”
Last summer, a fatal workplace accident took place on a construction site at 233-245 Dunlop St. W., in Barrie, where an eight-storey apartment building continues to be built. Corey Phillips, 52, was pronounced dead at the scene. While it still remains unclear what happened in that incident, a section of the site had been cordoned off with a white tarp and a large steel beam could be seen protruding from underneath. An inquest is expected to be called because it was a workplace fatality, but no dates have been announced.
