Although city officials were surprised to learn that municipal codes failed to require much oversight for scaffolds like the one that collapsed at the John Hancock Center, few cities closely regulate such equipment.
Like Chicago, many cities leave such regulation to state or federal occupational safety agencies. And those groups tend to examine scaffolding only in response to complaints, or after something goes wrong.
New York City seems to be a rare exception, according to an informal survey of major cities conducted by the Tribune. In addition to licensing scaffold workers, New York requires permits for all renovation projects using scaffolds suspended from rooftop outrigging like that used at the Hancock.
The failure of other cities to adopt similar rules creates a dangerous hole in the regulatory safety net, said Ralph Bennett III, a professor in the construction technology department at Purdue University’s Calumet campus. “There’s no common sense to this,” said Bennett. “This is something the city has to do.”
In preliminary talks last week, city Building Department officials discussed the possibility of requiring contractors using scaffolding to hire structural engineers to certify that equipment is safe, said department spokeswoman Kristen Lobbins-Cabanban. But no decision has been made on the final form of any proposed alterations to the city code, nor is it certain that changes will be made, city officials said.
Regulators said they still don’t know how many outrigger scaffolds are in use in Chicago. But executives of local scaffolding firms estimated that about 500 to 600 are in use in the region at any given time, most of them in the city.
As officials mull filling what city corporation counsel Mara Georges termed “a gap” in city’s building code, investigators from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration are trying to piece together the chain of events that led to the collapse and fall of the Hancock scaffold that killed three and injured eight on March 9.
Peggy Whittaker, the most seriously injured in the incident, remained in critical condition Sunday in Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
The wreckage, much of which is at a South Side police impound lot, also will be examined by experts for both sides in a pair of wrongful-death lawsuits filed last week by the families of Jill Nelson of Olathe, Kan., and Melissa Cook and Nanatta Cameron, both of Chicago.
Cook County Circuit Judge William Maddux will hold a hearing Monday to work out the details of a protective order he issued to preserve evidence in the suits.
Chicago police also continue to investigate the accident.
Building officials in Los Angeles, Houston, Philadelphia, Toronto, Minneapolis, San Francisco and Boston told the Tribune that they do not specifically regulate scaffolds or the workers who assemble and operate them.
Purdue’s Bennett speculated that the omission occurs because scaffolds aren’t regarded as permanent. “People don’t care about temporary structures,” he said.
In Los Angeles, the city’s Building Department looks at the outrigging–the rooftop points where scaffolds are attached–when it inspects new buildings. “But we don’t regulate the equipment itself,” said department spokesman Bob Steinbach.
Even if the city withheld approval of a building’s outrigging, “realistically, if they go and use it, there’s no way we would know,” Steinbach said, noting that there are 500 inspectors for the city’s 1.2 million buildings.
New York City requires training and testing for riggers, the workers who assemble and operate outrigger scaffolds, said Ilyse Fink, spokeswoman for the city’s Building Department.
“Only a rigger is licensed to put up a scaffold and he is responsible for its proper operation,” Fink said.
The city’s 556 riggers pay either $150 or $30 for their licenses, depending on whether they are authorized to hoist more than 1,200 pounds. “You also have to file plans and get a permit,” Fink said.
There’s no charge for project permits, she said. In 2001, New York granted 1,148 scaffolding permits, a figure reduced from a normal annual level of about 1,500 by the Sept. 11 attacks, Fink said.
