DOB: Construction Site Fatalities Drop

The DOB released its annual safety report card today, and for the most part it seems like the city’s recent efforts to beef up safety and enforcement standards are bearing fruit. Most notably, from January through October of this year there was a 43 percent drop in the number of construction-related fatalities compared to the same period in ’06 (there were eight fatalities this year and 14 during the same 10-month window last year). The report also found that accidents on low-rise construction sites decreased from 66 to 51, while the number of construction-related injuries stayed constant. In fact, the only negative increase recorded by the department was a jump in accidents on high-rise construction sites, which went from 23 incidents last year to 42 this year (a leap that the department attributes much of to accidents involving construction material falling off high-rise developments as they’re being built). Overall, though, these numbers are great news—let’s hope that this kind of success extends to the other areas of enforcement like after-hours work and other less obvious corner-cutting by developers and contractors.
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Photo by The Newbster