NEW HAVEN, Conn. — It's been four days since eight people were injured in a partial building collapse on Lafayette Street in New Haven. Now, The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is looking into the incident to figure out how it happened.
"The crews, for the scope and scale of this incident, and the location, and the type of instruction did an excellent job across the board," said Justin Bialecki, Deputy Chief for the New Haven Fire Department.
Deputy Chief Bialecki was the man in charge of his crews during the initial response. He said it came in as a 911 call, with reports of a partial building collapse and multiple people injured. Firefighters got to the scene in under four minutes. Then, they spent the next 45 minutes rescuing six people who were trapped inside. Two others had already exited the building on their own before firefighters got there. All eight victims were sent to the hospital. As of Tuesday, they've all been released except for two people, who a spokesperson for Yale New Haven Health said are in "fair condition."
"I couldn't expect or ask for more from what those personnel did that day," Bialecki said.
The city now knows construction workers were pouring millions of pounds of concrete when the building partially collapsed, sending the workers falling through floors. But Deputy Chief Bialecki said his fire crews worked quickly. They executed a high point rescue, pulling people from the building, some who were partially buried under the rubble.
"This is a fairly significant incident. But we've prepared well and our rescue companies, our truck companies, this is something that we work with," Bialecki said.
Just recently, New Haven fire officials were talking about the building collapse in Ohio, and how they would respond to a scenario like that. Plus, Bialecki said they train for this year-round.
"It comes from teamwork, it comes from well-trained personnel, that comes from the command staff," Bialecki said.
Now, New Haven leaders are looking into the incident and assisting OSHA with its investigation.
“It’s really important to underscore that we want to make absolutely sure that something like this never happens again," said Mayor Justin Elicker (D) of New Haven.
The city has done its checks and balances on the business leading the job, RMS Companies. They said they've found nothing wrong with the job site so far.
“Nothing irregular across the board," said Bob Dillon with New Haven's Office of Building Inspection and Enforcement.
Dillon said RMS has all the proper permits for the job.
"I've had no issues whatsoever with 188 Lafayette. And they’ve pretty much been on that block for probably three years," Dillon said.
The city is also looking into similar construction projects to make sure the same thing doesn't happen there. In the meantime, first responders are prepping for a debrief, as they hope for the speedy recovery of all the victims.
"The potential is of course there for this to be even a larger and more tragic incident. But our people, for what they were presented with, worked quickly under harrowing conditions," Bialecki said.
The job has been put on pause as OSHA is investigating. The city has asked RMS to select an engineer to get the site back to the way it was before the partial collapse. Until then, no work will be happening on the site.
FOX61 reached out to RMS, and a spokesperson said, “First and foremost, the safety of our construction teams is our top priority. Our thoughts are focused on a full recovery for those who were injured and we greatly appreciate the heroic work of the first responders. We will continue to work with our safety team and all of the appropriate government agencies to fully investigate the incident."
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