On June 23, five steelworkers were injured when a 6-ft-dia., 70-ft-long rebar cage collapsed at the $2.4-billion Terminal 3 project at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. Around 7 a.m., Tuesday, workers were attaching interior wire supports for the number 11-sized rebar cage lying on the ground lengthwise when it collapsed, trapping them inside. An unidentified worker used a forklift to elevate the weight off of the men until the Clark County Fire Dept. arrived. It took 30 minutes to extract the men by cutting the rebar cage, which was to serve as a structural component of a subterranean roadway bridge in front of the new 1.87-million-sq-ft terminal three building.
Steelworkers were employed by San Diego-based Pacific Coast Steel, which had been onsite since February as a subcontractor to Perini Building Co., a unit of Tutor Perini Corp., Framingham, Mass. The three-level, steel-and-glass structure along Russell Road, just east of Maryland Parkway, measures 300-ft-wide by 2,300-ft-long; it's the equivalent of six football fields laid end-to-end. Pacific Coast Steel has completed over 1,400 rebar cages in total at the airport, each weighing up to 30,000 pounds once complete.