Permits key in scaffold probe

City and federal safety officials Monday remained uncertain about the cause of Saturday’s fatal scaffold accident at the John Hancock Center, as municipal agencies puzzled over who if anyone was responsible for issuing permits for the renovation project.

Experts said Chicago ordinances are broad and vague on skyscraper scaffolding. In fact, the city typically does not inspect such structures at all, said Hunter Gilbertson, whose firm has worked on scaffolding projects at the Hancock.

“All facades are supervised by structural engineers, who are hired by the people who own the buildings,” said Gilbertson, president of Gilco Scaffolding of Des Plaines.

Ald. Bernard Stone (50th) criticized Hancock management, saying a forecast of high winds for Saturday should have prompted officials to bring the scaffolding down to the ground. “To leave it up there in a wind like that is nuts,” Stone said.

But keeping scaffolding suspended almost halfway up the 1,127-foot tower should not by itself have been a hazard, Gilbertson said.

If scaffolding is properly anchored, “nothing would ever happen, I don’t care how high the wind blows,” he said.

At least six city investigators visited the accident site on Monday, joined by a representative of the U.S. Occupational Health and Safety Administration, and officials from the building’s owner, Shorenstein Co.

Three women were killed and 8 others were injured, one critically, when scaffolding on the 42nd floor fell atop cars waiting in traffic on Chestnut Street.

At City Hall, officials searched in vain for a scaffolding permit for the Hancock’s 18-month facade cleaning and window caulking project.

The Transportation Department normally is responsible for issuing such permits because the rigs operate over the public way–sidewalks and streets–though officials said they’re not sure if a permit was required in this case.

That’s because the scaffolding hung over a plaza in front of the Hancock, not a street or a sidewalk, raising the possibility of a loophole in the city code.

Transportation Department spokesman Brian Steele insisted it was too early to draw any conclusions.

“We are continuing to check our records to see what permits have been issued at this address,” said Steele. “We have checked over the past two years, but have found nothing.”

“What is applicable in this situation? That is the unanswered question,” he said. “We are trying to get answers to exactly what the scope of work was. At this point, we don’t have enough information to determine what this situation would have called for.”

Buildings Commissioner Mary Richardson-Lowry declined to say whether there might be a flaw in the city’s requirements.

“I don’t know if that equipment was there for longer than two years,” she said. “We have conflicting information. . . . We will talk to them [the contractors] about what they obtained, what they believed they were obligated to obtain.”

No one was working on the scaffold at the time of the accident. Work had been called off for Saturday because of high winds, according to a renovation worker interviewed by CLTV on Monday.

Mayor Richard Daley stopped short of assigning blame for the accident but said the contractor using the scaffolding bore responsibility for making sure the equipment was safe.

In any case, Daley said, it’s not City Hall’s responsibility to monitor scaffolding on every building. “This isn’t the city’s problem 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to keep tabs on them,” he asserted.

On Sunday, city officials said that scaffolding ordinances require compliance with rules set by the American National Standards Institute and the scaffolding manufacturers’ guidelines.

The institute could not provide a copy of the guidelines on Monday.

But Stone contended that, no matter what those requirements may prove to be, they are superseded by a specific section of the code that states: “All scaffolds for use in the erection, repair, alteration or removal of buildings shall be so constructed as to ensure the safety of persons working on, or passing under or passing by the scaffold.”

The scaffold was at the 42nd floor, which houses a “docking station” for scaffold rigs, said a representative for Shorenstein Co., which owns the building. The other access points are the 16th floor, the roof, and ground level.

The project was slated for completion around November, the representative said.

The main project contractor, AMS Architectural Technology Inc., of Denver, was responsible for obtaining any necessary permits and operating the scaffold, the spokesperson said.

The scaffold was made and owned by Beeche Systems Inc., of Scotia, N.Y., and leased to AMS, according to a Shorenstein spokesman.

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A scaffold made by Beeche was involved in a fatal accident Jan. 2 on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

In that accident, the rectangular scaffold buckled in the middle, forcing up the ends of the platform and crushing a worker.

According to a preliminary analysis of the platform, “it looks like some of the welds were faulty,” said Susan Gard, a spokesperson for California OSHA. A final report is expected in July.

Beeche Systems President John Hedbring could not be reached for comment.

Joseph Weinraub, the president of AMS, the Hancock project’s main contractor, pledged in a statement to do all he could to find the cause of the accident.

A third firm involved in the project, Prime Staging Inc. of Bensenville, was hired to assemble the scaffolding, said its president, Eric Ringstad.

Building Department spokeswoman Kristen Lobbins-Cabanban described the scaffold system as 100 feet long and 5 feet wide and weighing about 3,000 pounds. On Sunday, officials said it weighed 1,000 pounds.

Lobbins-Cabanban said the platform portion of the rig fell on the south side of the building, while the outrigger–a hoist component on the roof that supports the scaffolding–fell on the north side.

Richardson-Lowry said later on Monday she could not confirm that report. She said investigators were seeking to determine the origin of all the debris.

Richardson-Lowry said she was unaware of reports from people who had been on the building’s observation deck that they saw steel falling from the roof the building.

A Minneapolis man said he saw a chunk of metal dropping in front of him as he peered out of the Hancock building’s 94th floor observation deck at about the time of the accident.