Three workers injured in Seattle high-rise accident

The state is looking into a construction accident in which three ironworkers were injured yesterday afternoon when a metal crossbeam partially collapsed on the eighth floor of the new WaMu Center in downtown Seattle.

The three men, all in their late 20s or early 30s, suffered broken bones and possible abdominal injuries and were taken to Harborview Medical Center, Seattle Fire Department spokeswoman Helen Fitzpatrick said.

Two men were in satisfactory condition and one was in serious condition, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Other workers brought one man down on a temporary elevator, and firefighters rescued the other two at the site at the corner of Union Street and Second Avenue.

Elaine Fischer, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Labor and Industries (L&I), which investigates workplace safety, said inspectors were sent to the construction site to determine if the employer was meeting worker-safety requirements.

THOMAS JAMES HURST / THE SEATTLE TIMES A crowd watches the goings-on yesterday after a crossbeam collapsed about 80 feet above ground at a Seattle construction site.

Bob McCleskey, president of Sellen Construction, said the collapsed beam was installed recently as part of the building's flooring. "It was attached to the building and it dropped," roughly 80 feet above street level, he said.

"It should have been perfectly stable," McCleskey said of the beam, which normally would have been bolted and welded into place. The beam — which looked like two beams welded together to form an L-shape — hung from wires attached to a crane yesterday and was resting partially on the corner of a metal deck.

"Our priority is to stabilize the situation and to start thinking about what caused it," McCleskey said.

The ironworkers were erecting structural steel and metal decking at the time, he said.

McCleskey could not say if the beam fell on the workers, but Fitzpatrick said firefighters did not have to extricate the men.

Pam Brown, 48, was walking down Union Street to catch a bus on Second Avenue when the beam collapsed about 1:30 p.m.

"It was pretty scary," Brown said. "All I heard was this crashing, loud, grinding noise and I looked up and saw a guy up there. He was straddling that beam. It's a good thing he had his safety lines on."

Police closed the area for roughly two hours. After the collapsed beam was stabilized, the work site was closed for the day.

L&I officials have conducted 12 inspections at Sellen construction sites in the region in the past five years, and the company has twice been cited for serious safety violations, said Fischer, the L&I spokeswoman.

At a construction project at a Bellingham hospital in March 2003, the company was cited for exposing employees to a toxic gas and fined $1,800; the hospital was fined $2,400, Fischer said.

During a planned inspection in April 2002, Sellen was fined $2,450 and cited for failing to protect two workers from potential falls at a site on Sand Point Way in Seattle, she said.

It does not appear that anyone was injured in either incident.

McCleskey said 250 construction workers are helping to build the new center and Seattle Art Museum expansion at Second and Union.

Begun in February 2004, the building will be 45 stories high when it's finished next year, he said.

Sara Jean Green: 206-515-5654 or sgreen@seattletimes.com