Several floors of steel-beam superstructure collapsed at the construction site of the new U.S. Postal Service building in the South Loop on Wednesday, spilling workers to the ground several floors below, officials said.
One worker was killed and five others were injured, at least three critically. Identities were not immediately available.
A large portion of the superstructure of the 965,000-square-foot building at Harrison and Canal Streets was reduced to a twisted scrap heap of I-beams and corrugated metal.
“It fell apart like an Erector set,” said Fire Commissioner Raymond Orozco after surveying the scene.
Orozco said the injured workers were “clipping” the beams together when the collapse began, sending some of them falling two or three stories.
The accident disrupted southbound train service out of Union Station for a while, but normal service was restored before the evening rush hour.
Officials could not immediately say what set off the collapse, although several witnesses said a crane was moving a huge steel I-beam near the point where the chain-reaction accident started.
“Until there’s an investigation, there’s no way to know what happened,” said City Buildings Commissioner Dan Weil.
Weil said that some of the beams had not yet been fully bolted to the columns when they fell. “How much that impacted on what happened we don’t really know,” Weil said.
According to witnesses, the top section of steel infrastructure, about three stories high, fell onto the one below it, which in turn fell to the one below it.
“It was like a house of cards collapsing,” said Regina O’Neal, a 32-year-old postal worker who watched the accident from a lunch room window of a Postal Service garage across the street.
Gregory Stackhouse, a 30-year-old construction worker on the site, said he watched the workers trying to get free from the tumbling structure.
“Some were hanging on the beams, some slid off,” he said. “Those who didn’t slide off got caught underneath.”
Oscar Moore, a tractor-trailer operator for the postal service, was across the street when the accident occurred.
“It sounded like a couple of jets were falling out of the sky,” he said. “We all rushed out to see what was going on. When we looked over, pieces of steel were falling all over the place.”
An hour after the accident, one burly steel worker walked away from the site, his welding glasses perched on his hard hat and his lunch bucket in his hands.
“I can’t talk about it,” he said. “You’re in there working every day. I just can’t talk about it.”
