Worker Badly Injured In Fall From Ladder

By Nick Pinto
POSTED MARCH 1, 2008

A man at work on the third-floor windows outside of 45 White Street, a building under conversion to residential use, was seriously injured last month when he fell two stories from a ladder onto the sidewalk shed below.

Emergency responders arrived on the scene within minutes, stabilizing the man on a stretcher as his blood dripped onto the sidewalk below.

Swaddled in white blankets, the unidentified worker was gently lifted into the bucket of a ladder truck and slowly lowered to the street. The victim was taken by ambulance to St. Vincent’s hospital, where he was listed in stable condition, according to a Fire Department spokesman

Police at the scene said the man had several broken bones and had bled profusely.

Jennifer Turner, an architect who lives and works in the neighborhood, was walking by the site at the time and saw the accident.

“He was at the top of the ladder, two stories above the scaffolding,” said Turner, who reported the incident to 911. “I saw him fall away from the ladder and to the right. He didn’t make a sound as he was falling. It was completely silent. It looked like he landed on his face.”

Following the Feb. 15 accident, a Department of Buildings inspection team evaluated the site and determined that the work being done did not require a DOB permit.

Forty-five White Street is an 18-unit apartment building, recently converted to residential use, where penthouse units rent for up to
$12,900 per month.

The incident was the latest in a recent string of building accidents in Lower Manhattan, including a crane collapse at 450 Washington Street on Feb. 1, a crane mishap that resulted in a worker injury at the Goldman Sachs building in Battery Park City, and the death of a worker in an accident at the Trump Soho building.

Calls to the building’s owner, Yahuda Braun, and the contractor, Tahir Bhutta, were not returned.

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