Eight hundred miles west of New York City, a construction worker was hospitalized yesterday after he was struck by a large pipe, officials said.
The incident was in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, where workers were moving a large concrete sewer pipe. The worker was in a trench shortly before 11 yesterday morning when he was struck by the pipe.
A news report didn’t indicate whether the pipe was being placed into the trench or taken out of it.
The construction worker was “conscious and alert” afterwards, however, as he was being transported to a nearby hospital.
In a separate incident far to the south of Wisconsin, a Huntsville, Alabama, construction worker was hospitalized after a trench collapse.
He, too, was hospitalized afterwards.
Workers were using heavy equipment to dig a trench for a sewer line when one of the sides of the trench collapsed, burying the man in the deepest part of the trench.
His co-workers immediately tried to use the heavy digging equipment to rescue him. Firefighters arrived on the scene, however, and stopped a bad situation from getting even worse.
“They were trying to dig him out with the machine,” a firefighter told an area newspaper. “We stopped the guy from digging. That’s not what we want to happen there.”
Instead, rescuers and construction workers were able to free the man by digging him out by hand.
Firefighters said the worker was conscious and speaking as he was being taken to a Huntsville hospital.
He was later listed in stable condition there.
If these accidents had happened in New York, the workers would be able to apply for workers’ compensation. If those benefits were denied them, they would have the right to appeal the decision with the help of an attorney.
Source: journaltimes.com, “Worker injured on construction site taken to hospital,” April 1, 2013
- Our law firm represents injured New York construction workers in workers’ comp appeals.