Federal officials investigating a fatal accident at a senior citizens’ home under construction on the South Side said Tuesday it could take weeks to determine what caused a slab of concrete to fall, killing two workers.
Meanwhile, the president of the contracting firm overseeing the project, Michael Mozal of Joseph J. Duffy & Co., defended the company’s safety record and said he was working with investigators.
“We’ve built more than 50 projects like this,” Mozal said. “We’ve never had a serious accident or death on one of our sites before in more than 82 years in the business.”
The accident killed Duffy employee Jaime Jones, 33, of Highland, Ind., and James Beemsterboer, 37, of New Lenox, who worked for Bonus Electric Co. in Lemont.
Co-workers remembered Jones, who was superintendent at the site, as being excited about his work.
“He was a very outgoing, enthusiastic, young man … like my grandfather, a contractor from northwest Indiana making his way in the big city,” said Kevin Campbell of Campbell Tiu Campbell Inc., the site’s architect.
Bonus Electric’s owner, Jack Haberkorn, said Tuesday that Beemsterboer had worked for the company for about 18 years. He said he was too distraught to speak further.
Relatives of the dead workers could not be reached for comment.
The accident, at 8216 S. Racine Ave., came five months into the construction of a seven-story block of 54 senior housing units. The $5 million project is being built under a program funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Investigators from the city and Occupational Safety and Health Administration have begun to focus on what caused the 25-by-50-foot concrete slab to fall as it was being placed in the fourth-floor ceiling of the building.
Mid-States Concrete Products, a Beloit, Wis.-based firm, supplied the prefabricated slabs and was in charge of the installation, Mozal said.
Mid-State’s safety director, Shannon Shamer did not return calls for comment Tuesday.
Eugene Mojekwu, the site’s structural engineer, said many buildings are built using the same technique. He said he is unaware of any similar accidents.
OSHA’s investigation could take six weeks to complete, said Gary Anderson, director of the agency’s Chicago-area operations. The crane used to lift and place the slab has been released to the contractor and removed from the site, he said.
OSHA records on Duffy show one major health and safety violation, a 1994 problem with cranes during work on Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge. Three personal-injury claims have been filed against the company by workers.
Chicago Building Department spokesman Peter Scales said the city has contracted Wiss Janey Elstner Associates Inc., a structural engineering firm, to determine the cause of the accident.
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A man who works near the site, who declined to give his name, said he saw the crane lifting the concrete slab and lowering it where it would fit as the ceiling of the fourth floor. The edge of the slab collided with the front face of the building, sending bricks tumbling down. The slab wobbled, he said, then crashed through the floor below it.
“That’s when you heard this thundering sound,” he said.
Joseph Taylor, 67, said that as treasurer of the Holiness is the Way Gospel Temple, the church that is building the senior citizen home, he spoke with Jones, the site superintendent, many times.
He said Jones was professional and easy-going but always courteous. Taylor remembered him asking how his wife was and making a point to call the church’s pastor, Rev. Henry Sutton, by his full title.
“Anything you wanted to talk about he could talk about,” he said. “He was like one of us.”
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