BY MATT LYSIAK and DAVE GOLDINER
DAILY NEWS WRITERS
Thursday, January 31st 2008, 4:00 AM
Apowerful wind gustsent a Brooklyn scaffold worker plunging 13 stories to his death Wednesday, authorities said.
Jose Palacios, 43, a big-hearted father who sent money to his wife and daughter in Mexico, was installing stucco at the top of a Clinton Ave. building when the wind knocked over his scaffold. He fell 130 feet to the ground below, witnesses said.
"He was just a screaming blur," said laborer Ben Tee, 49, who was working a few floors down. "To pick a man up and throw him that far is unbelievable."
Another worker escaped with minor injuries when he fell to a landing one floor below just after 10 a.m. A third laborer cheated death when he managed to grab onto a roof bulkhead.
Ricardo Uribe was working on the seventh floor when he heard a "big whoosh" and a crash below. He rushed to help Palacios but found him motionless.
"This is a just a huge tragedy," said Uribe, 35. "That wind was like a whirlwind."
Forecasters said winds gusted up to 39 mphWednesday morning as a winter storm moved north of the city. Buildings Department officials said they issue warning advisories to contractors when forecasters warn of winds over 30 mph.
"This huge gust just tipped the scaffolding right over," said FDNY Chief Joe Woznic.
Buildings Department spokeswoman Kate Lindquist said investigators were looking into whether the scaffold - a type that is installed on the rooftop, instead of suspended from the side of the building - was adequately secured.
Inspectors issued a stop-work order at the site. A condo complex with a glass facade is being built on the property.
Palacios' relatives remembered him as a good father who sent money home every week to his wife, Virginia.
He lived with his niece and doted on her children, and loved chatting on the computer with his teenage daughter, Veronica. "He was very sweet," said Jasmine Solis, 28, Palacios' niece.
Palacios had been working construction jobs in New York for about three years. He planned to move back to Mexico at the end of the year. His body will be sent home for burial, his loved ones said.
The fatal accident was the city's second death plunge in the past two weeks. A worker died Jan. 14 when a floor collapsed at Donald Trump's 42story tower in SoHo.
Amid calls for better safeguards, the city plans to release new construction guidelines next week. At least 43 people died while working construction in the city in 2006, the deadliest year in at least a decade, the most recent federal statistics show. The toll was up 87% from 2005, when 23 people died.
Showing posts with label death. Show all posts
Showing posts with label death. Show all posts
Friday, February 15, 2008
Friday, April 13, 2007
A culture of death in Bay Ridge?
By Matthew Lysiak
The Brooklyn Paper
Has a darkness settled over Bay Ridge? The recent discovery of a dead newborn, discarded in a trash bag on the back porch of a Colonial Road home, has once again shined the spotlight on our quiet community, and for a familiar reason — Bay Ridge, Brooklyn is again the scene of a horrific death of a child.
“This kind of thing just doesn’t happen here,” said Yellow Hooker’s neighbor, who has lived in Bay Ridge for 46 years. “It feels like we have been cursed lately. We have gone years without reading about the death of a child, and now the third child in the last two months.
“You can feel the death in the air,” she added.
Residents still haven’t recovered from the Feb. 8 fire that ripped through an apartment building on 74th Street and took the lives of two young girls, ages 2 and 4. It was a tragic accident that scarred many residents, especially in the tightly knit Arab-American community.
“The accident was horrific, but it is far easier to wrap your mind around an accident than it is to understand how a mother could murder her own child,” my neighbor added, an allusion to the allegation that Laura Sergio, 29, murdered her newborn baby and dumped the body at her mom’s Colonial Road house.
That sordid saga began when Sergio’s parents took her to Lutheran Medical Center at 9 pm last Friday after she complained of stomach pains. Doctors soon realized that she had recently given birth, so they asked her where the baby was. When Sergio reacted evasively, the doctors called the cops.
Police found the baby wrapped in a trash bag — left to die on the back porch in the frigid cold. Later, they charged Sergio with killing the child.
News of the murder even reached my hometown of Danville, Pennsylvania, provoking a semi-frantic telephone call from my family, which ended up being just the medicine I needed.
“Are you sure Bay Ridge is the right place for you?” asked my mother in her restrained voice. “Do you sometimes think it would be better if you moved closer to home?”
Closer to home? My instinctual reaction was to leap to the Ridge’s defense and explain how she had it all wrong, and that this kind of thing just doesn’t happen in Bay Ridge — how although we are part of the big city, it is still part of a community.
Most of all, I wanted to tell her that, recent deaths aside, I had never been to a place that had as much life as Bay Ridge. But what actually came through the phone was much more to the point.
“Move closer to home?” I said. “But I could never leave Bay Ridge.”
The Kitchen Sink
We love a great April Fools gag, so credit must go to the mysterious “Phantom” who runs the Bay Ridge Blog after posting that Staten Island Ferry service would return to Bay Ridge. The blogger was trying to top his previous year’s April Fool’s Day post that Mike Tyson would be fighting at the Alpine, which received national attention. …
Bensonhurst’s famous New Utrecht Reform Church on 18th Avenue and 84th Street will be holding a thrift sale on Saturday, April 21, 10–3, to raise the $2 million needed to fix the church’s sanctuary. Will there be bargains? “Of course!” said Rose Gianni Lood, a parishioner for more than 70 years. “We’re over 330 years old and will have bargains galore.” …
Last week, we asked, “Which famous talk show host did John Quaglione, spokesman for state Sen. Marty Golden (R-Bay Ridge), once work for?” The choices were Oprah , Ellen or Tim Russert. And the winning answer is Tim Russert of “Meet the Press” (though you could be forgiven for thinking that the smooth-talking “John Q” learned the tricks of his trade from Oprah).
The Brooklyn Paper
Has a darkness settled over Bay Ridge? The recent discovery of a dead newborn, discarded in a trash bag on the back porch of a Colonial Road home, has once again shined the spotlight on our quiet community, and for a familiar reason — Bay Ridge, Brooklyn is again the scene of a horrific death of a child.
“This kind of thing just doesn’t happen here,” said Yellow Hooker’s neighbor, who has lived in Bay Ridge for 46 years. “It feels like we have been cursed lately. We have gone years without reading about the death of a child, and now the third child in the last two months.
“You can feel the death in the air,” she added.
Residents still haven’t recovered from the Feb. 8 fire that ripped through an apartment building on 74th Street and took the lives of two young girls, ages 2 and 4. It was a tragic accident that scarred many residents, especially in the tightly knit Arab-American community.
“The accident was horrific, but it is far easier to wrap your mind around an accident than it is to understand how a mother could murder her own child,” my neighbor added, an allusion to the allegation that Laura Sergio, 29, murdered her newborn baby and dumped the body at her mom’s Colonial Road house.
That sordid saga began when Sergio’s parents took her to Lutheran Medical Center at 9 pm last Friday after she complained of stomach pains. Doctors soon realized that she had recently given birth, so they asked her where the baby was. When Sergio reacted evasively, the doctors called the cops.
Police found the baby wrapped in a trash bag — left to die on the back porch in the frigid cold. Later, they charged Sergio with killing the child.
News of the murder even reached my hometown of Danville, Pennsylvania, provoking a semi-frantic telephone call from my family, which ended up being just the medicine I needed.
“Are you sure Bay Ridge is the right place for you?” asked my mother in her restrained voice. “Do you sometimes think it would be better if you moved closer to home?”
Closer to home? My instinctual reaction was to leap to the Ridge’s defense and explain how she had it all wrong, and that this kind of thing just doesn’t happen in Bay Ridge — how although we are part of the big city, it is still part of a community.
Most of all, I wanted to tell her that, recent deaths aside, I had never been to a place that had as much life as Bay Ridge. But what actually came through the phone was much more to the point.
“Move closer to home?” I said. “But I could never leave Bay Ridge.”
The Kitchen Sink
We love a great April Fools gag, so credit must go to the mysterious “Phantom” who runs the Bay Ridge Blog after posting that Staten Island Ferry service would return to Bay Ridge. The blogger was trying to top his previous year’s April Fool’s Day post that Mike Tyson would be fighting at the Alpine, which received national attention. …
Bensonhurst’s famous New Utrecht Reform Church on 18th Avenue and 84th Street will be holding a thrift sale on Saturday, April 21, 10–3, to raise the $2 million needed to fix the church’s sanctuary. Will there be bargains? “Of course!” said Rose Gianni Lood, a parishioner for more than 70 years. “We’re over 330 years old and will have bargains galore.” …
Last week, we asked, “Which famous talk show host did John Quaglione, spokesman for state Sen. Marty Golden (R-Bay Ridge), once work for?” The choices were Oprah , Ellen or Tim Russert. And the winning answer is Tim Russert of “Meet the Press” (though you could be forgiven for thinking that the smooth-talking “John Q” learned the tricks of his trade from Oprah).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Welcome to Lysiak's Resource Guide!
Lysiak exposing the lack of security at the Towers pipeline