Construction Worker Killed in Building Collapse in Manhattan

Robert Caplin for The New York TimesA construction worker was killed on Thursday when a building in Manhattan owned by Columbia University collapsed. 

A construction worker died Thursday after a century-old, two-story warehouse under demolition as part of Columbia University’s expansion collapsed in a hail of concrete, bricks and steel that engulfed three workers.

Cries for help could be heard as firefighters and other rescuers converged on the crushed remains of the building at 604-606 West 131st Street in West Harlem and began picking through the rubble to free the three workers who were trapped.

The loud whoosh of the collapse, shortly before 8 a.m., startled people in the area. Witnesses said the noise was followed by the whir of sirens as emergency crews arrived in large numbers.

“I don’t know what happened,” said James Hollie, 53, an equipment operator who was working at the site at the time of the accident. “It just fell down.”

Willy Katende, 46, who lives on the 12th floor of a building across Broadway from the site, said he was pouring a glass of soda when, through his window, he saw a wall come down.

“All I saw was concrete falling down on the workers,” he said.

Two of the workers, Sakim Kirby, 31, and Juan Vicente Ruiz, 69, were buried up to their chests in slabs of reinforced concrete, steel beams, bricks and other debris, but firefighters were able to crawl in and extricate them, said James Long, a Fire Department spokesman. Both men were taken to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center; Mr. Ruiz died there.

Firefighters from Squad 41 and Rescue Companies 1 and 3 tunneled their way toward the third worker, King Range, 60, who was buried in an air-filled void deep in the wreckage on the 40-by-75-foot site, Mr. Long said. In an intricate, 45-minute rescue, the firefighters simultaneously dug out and stabilized the debris, “to operate safely,” said Mr. Long, who explained that rescuers also had to maintain a safe exit path.

“They could hear him,” said Capt. Robert Morris, the Rescue 1 commander. “They shined a light on him, and they started digging him out.”

Mr. Range had a half-ton slab of concrete on his left arm, a steel pipe pinning his legs and beams and bricks across his chest, making it difficult for him to breathe.

“He was basically saying, ‘Help me,’ ” said Captain Morris, a 38-year veteran who took part in the rescue.

Mr. Range was in stable condition on Thursday night at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt, as was Mr. Kirby, a hospital spokesman said.

“He’s a very good man, a very hard-working man and a very honest man,” Deborah Smalls, the mother of one of Mr. Range’s children, said Thursday evening.

Maria Ruiz, 62, a niece of Mr. Ruiz, said he was one of 11 children and had immigrated from the Dominican Republic in 1997.

She and other relatives had gathered at the Ruiz home on Leggett Avenue in the Bronx. “Everybody is crying; we are going to miss him a lot,” she said, adding, “He wanted to retire and move back to Santo Domingo.”

With his wife of 46 years, Francisca, Mr. Ruiz had two children, Juan Vicente, 39, and Sandra, 44, who also live in New York. “He was a very happy person,” his niece said. “He loved to work.”

The workers were employed by Breeze National Inc. of Brooklyn, a company whose founder, Toby Romano Sr., was convicted of federal bribery charges in 1988 and has been identified by law enforcement officials as having ties to organized crime. Mr. Romano left the company in 2009; it is now run by Toby Romano Jr., his son.

The subcontractor’s work was being overseen by Lend Lease, the successor company to Bovis, the construction management giant that oversaw the demolition of the Deutsche Bank building in Lower Manhattan and, in a 2008 agreement with prosecutors, acknowledged failures that contributed to the deaths of two firefighters in a blaze at the bank building a year earlier.

In 2010, after a worker died in a fall at a job site on West 129th Street that was also connected to Columbia’s expansion, Breeze National was cited for two violations related to its lack of fall protection, said Ted Fitzgerald, a spokesman for the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The violations carried fines of $14,000. “The company accepted the citation, corrected the hazard and paid a fine” of $1,687, Mr. Fitzgerald said.

And in 2007, the city denied the company’s application for a license to cart trash or construction debris, said Kamran Mumtaz, a City Hall spokesman. It was put on a “caution list” of contractors and has no current contracts with the city, he said.

Richard A. Weiss, a spokesman for the laborers’ union, said Breeze National was a, “good, responsible contractor.”

“This type of work is dangerous, and it is just a horrible, horrible tragedy,” said Mr. Weiss, who said Mr. Kirby had suffered a broken arm and head trauma.

The cause of the collapse is still being investigated, said Tony Sclafani, a spokesman for the city’s Buildings Department. But it appears it may have been triggered by the severing on Thursday morning of a structural beam “that would have supported the original warehouse,” he said.

The department issued a stop-work order on March 5, for Breeze National’s failure to notify the city of the start of demolition work and for its lack of worker safety harnesses, Mr. Sclafani said. The order was rescinded two days later.

Mary Costello, a spokeswoman for Lend Lease, said that city permits were issued Feb. 7, that demolition began Feb. 27 and that the old warehouse roof had been dismantled and cleared away. Ms. Costello said Lend Lease had overseen the dismantling of other buildings on the block.

Even before the collapse, opponents of Columbia’s expansion project, which involves building a 17-acre campus, were planning a protest march for Thursday, said Tom DeMott, of the Coalition to Preserve Community. He said later that about 50 protesters had participated and that an overnight sit-in was being held in a building on West 125th Street.

A Columbia spokeswoman, Victoria Benitez, said the university acquired the warehouse, built in 1915, in May 2009, with plans for its site to be “the publicly accessible open space in between the business and school buildings.”

Because of its past, Breeze National was required by the university to retain an integrity risk management firm, Thacher Associates, to ensure that Toby Romano Sr. had no involvement in the Columbia project.

James Barron, Randy Leonard and William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting.