A slab of concrete crashed through a floor Monday at a senior home under construction on Chicago’s South Side, killing two workers under tons of rubble.
The accident occurred shortly before 2 p.m. at 8216 S. Racine Ave., where a 25-by-50-foot concrete slab that was to be part of the building’s fifth floor was being lowered and fell. The crash collapsed the fourth floor onto the workers on the third floor.
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“Those workers were under the floor that fell down on top of them,” said Fire Commissioner Cortez Trotter.
One of the workers, who a co-worker and the site owner identified as Jamie Jones of Indiana, was an employee of Joseph J. Duffy Co., a Chicago construction company that fire officials said was the site’s general contractor. The other man, who was not identified, was a subcontractor, said the co-worker, who declined to give his name.
The co-worker said they had been working at the site since about 6:30 a.m. Monday. He said he was working on the ground at the north end of the block at the time of the collapse and ran over to help.
“By the time I got there it was total chaos,” he said.
Messages left at the offices of Duffy and at the home of the person registered with the Illinois secretary of state as the president of the company were not returned.
The cause of the collapse was not determined Monday, but investigators planned to return to the scene Tuesday, said Peter Scales, a spokesman for the city’s Department of Buildings. “The work will stop while the investigation continues,” he said.
Representatives from the city and Occupational Safety and Health and Administration, who Scales said were on the scene Monday, will determine if construction will resume.
Firefighters said they removed the first body from the rubble about 2:45 p.m. This man was taken to Little Company of Mary Hospital in Evergreen Park, where he was pronounced dead at 3:52 p.m., according to a spokesman for the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
Recovery of the second man’s body was delayed because of the amount of concrete that had collapsed on him.
“There’s a lot of concrete on the floor, and it’s heavy. Because this is a recovery operation, we’re going slow for the safety of our firefighters,” said Ray Orozco, assistant deputy fire commissioner.
Rescue workers removed the second man’s body about 5:15 p.m. He was pronounced dead at Little Company of Mary at 5:45 p.m., said the medical examiner spokesman.
Groundbreaking at the site began last August, said Rev. Henry Sutton, pastor of Holiness Is the Way Gospel Temple, which is constructing the building next door as a home for low-income seniors. The home, which will be called Holiness Homes of Vision, is being built with federal grants, Sutton said.
Sutton said Jones was a supervisor at the site. “He was real nice,” Sutton said.
There had been no previous problems with the project, which was to be seven stories tall and completed next summer, Sutton said.
Construction permits for the building had been issued last January, officials said.
Pierre Johnson said he walked by the site before the collapse. He heard a sound and turned to see dust billowing out of the building. He ran a block home and called 911.
Ben Holliman, who works at an automobile repair shop one block from the accident, said that after a co-worker of his witnessed the concrete slabfall, they both ran went to the site.
“We walked down, and one of the workers was out,” he said. “When they pulled the guy out, [the supervisor] couldn’t get a pulse and he asked us to pray for the man–and that’s what we did.”
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