17 Injured as Construction Scaffold Collapses Onto Bus in Harlem

The Tuesday morning construction accident occurred on a busy commercial strip lined with clothing and other retail stores; firefighters quickly swarmed the bus and the collapsed scaffolding.

Seventeen people were injured when a building scaffold collapsed onto a city bus at West 125th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard in Harlem around 9:25 a.m. Tuesday, the Fire Department said. Fire officials described the injuries as minor and not life threatening and said no one was missing.

The scaffolding had been erected at 301 West 125th Street, a five-story brick building that was being demolished, the Department of Buildings said. Bricks from the building littered the street.

A police spokesman at the scene said that eight of the injured people were passengers on the bus and that two police officers sustained minor injuries. He said it appeared from preliminary accounts that during work on the elevator shaft in the building, bricks fell from building onto the scaffolding, knocking it down.

A spokeswoman for the buildings department, Jennifer Gilbert, said that the demolition project had permits and that the department received a complaint about the demolition on Sept. 7, but that inspectors sent to the site found nothing amiss. Officials at the company doing the demolition, Disano Demolition of Queens, were at the site behind police tape and could not immediately be reached for comment.

New York Times
September 21, 2011