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Miami’s skyline is changing rapidly, with cranes hovering over the city as projects continue to reshape it. But two recent construction incidents are raising new safety concerns among residents.
On Monday, a massive drilling rig toppled over at a Brickell work site and crashed onto multiple vehicles, sending four people to the hospital and sparking a car fire.
“I heard the crash come down and I saw the smoke from the building,” said area resident Carl.
The construction collapse led residents like Carl and others to question how safe these skyscraper projects actually are.
“There is a ton of construction, and I feel like you got to guarantee the safety when you know you’re building a couple feet up in the air,” he said.
“There are so many buildings and so many residents. We have children, and we thought about this during a morning commute,” said area resident Pousha.
It isn’t the first construction scare in the area. In August, a part of a crane at another construction site came crashing down onto a pool deck of a neighboring high-rise. No injuries were reported in that incident.
But with the construction projects showing no signs of slowing, the incidents are prompting questions from residents and workers below the construction sites.
Peter Dyga, CEO of Associated Builders and Contractors Florida East Coast., said proper safety procedures are critical at any work site.
“Construction is inherently a very dangerous job,” he said.
As for Monday’s incident, he said safety starts with strong leadership, proper training, appropriate equipment, and a culture that prioritizes safety.
“Making sure your employees are adequately trained with the equipment they are operating, and then there is the element of things that you just can’t control. That’s what we don’t know: really what happened here. Gust of wind, who knows?”
Investigators are still investigating the cause of the collapse.
Miami Mayor Eileen Higgins said city, county, and federal partners will work together to prevent another incident like this.
“The Occupational Safety and Health Administration will be involved to see exactly what caused this so that we, as both the City of Miami and Miami-Dade County, can decide whether or not we need to add any other procedure. So we just have to wait for that, but the most important thing is the lives that were very quickly saved,” she said.
Fire officials who responded to the collapse said it is a miracle that the four hospitalized suffered only minor injuries.
