Worker Hospitalized After Fall At World Trade Center

The Tribeca Trib 5/12/09

An ironworker erecting the steel decking of the Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum was hospitalized May 12 after falling at the work site.

His injuries are not thought to be life-threatening, according to a spokesman for the Port Authority, which oversees construction of the underground museum and street-level memorial plaza.

Around 8:15 a.m. Guido Castro, of Cornell Crane and Steel, fell about 20 feet, from the third to the second floor. The worker was taken to St. Vincent’s Hospital for treatment, but by the afternoon the hospital had yet to determine his condition.

“He was on his break, and it looks like he just slipped off the edge of the deck,” said the spokesman, Steve Coleman. According to Coleman, Castro was wearing a safety harness at the time, but it was not tethered to the structure.

“He was conscious and talking to emergency responders when they arrived,” Coleman said.

Work continued on the site following the accident, Coleman said, and the city’s Department of Buildings has not made any inquiry about the circumstances of the accident.

Castro is one of 189 workers assigned to the construction of the Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum plaza at the World Trade Center site. Steel erection for museum began last fall, and has continued amid recent disagreements between the Port Authority and developer Larry Silverstein over funding for other WTC projects. In October 2008, after admitting the project was more than two years behind schedule, Port Authority officials promised to complete “a significant portion” of the memorial plaza in time for the commemoration of the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11. The entire above-ground plaza, including landscaping and entryway to the underground museum, would not be finished until 2012.

The eight-acre Memorial Park will occupy the southwest corner of the World Trade Center site, just to the south of where the Port Authority is currently building One World Trade Center. The park includes two reflecting pools in the shape of the original Twin Towers and a parapet wall inscribed with the names of those killed in the attacks.