Construction Accident Results In Fatal Injury In College Station

A College Station construction site was the location of a fatal workplace accident yesterday when a shifting of the walls serving as the foundation of the project pinned a worker between two 1,500 pound shoring panels and the ground below. Forty-nine year old Armando Gonzalez was trapped inside a 30- to 40-foot hole when he became the victim of the fatal construction site injury.

It took four hours for first responders to retrieve Gonzalez’s body from the hole using an excavator that was already onsite and a high-pressure bag system to create space between the failed shoring. The fatal accident took place at the site of a new wastewater lift station on the Texas A&M Health Sciences Center campus.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 433 employees in Texas suffered a fatal workplace injury in 2011, the most recent year for which compiled statistics are available. The overwhelming majority of workplace deaths involved men, at 401, with 83 construction site fatalities contributing to the overall total of Texas worker deaths.

Of the 83 deaths that involved construction workers, violence by coworkers, transportation-related accidents, fires and explosions, slip and falls or trip and falls, exposure to harmful chemicals or environments and contact with equipment were listed as causes. Slip and falls and transportation-related accidents each accounted for 22 construction worker deaths, while impacts with equipment such as with the College Station fatality accounted for 15.

Source: Times Record News, “Man dies in College Station construction accident,” May 30, 2013