Safety
NC Penalizes Contractors for Deadly Charlotte Scaffolding Collapse
The mast climber scaffold collapse that killed three workers occurred at the construction site of a 16-story residential building.
Photo courtesy Charlotte Fire Dept. via Twitter
Two Charlotte, N.C., contractors have been fined by the state Dept. of Labor for safety violations that contributed to a Jan. 2, 2023, scaffold collapse at the site of a 16-story residential building in the city. The scaffold failure killed three workers and injured two others.
Old North State Masonry LLC, the company that erected the mast climber scaffold system, was fined $87,012 for six serious violations of North Carolina’s Occupational Safety Act. Friends Masonry Construction LLC, a subcontractor to Old North State Masonry, was fined $43,506 for three serious violations.
Each violation carries a maximum penalty of $14,502, and is based on consideration of factors such as the gravity of the violations, the size of the business, the good faith and cooperation of the employer and the history of previous violations.
Neither firm responded to a request for comment July 5. Both companies have 15 days from the receipt of the citations to request an informal conference with the North Carolina Dept. of Labor, appeal the citations or pay the penalties.
The agency’s investigation found that a bearing bridge between two mast climbing platforms at the site was not capable of supporting its own weight and four times the maximum intended load, as required by federal regulations. Old North State Masonry “assembled the bridge section in a configuration different from the approved engineering drawings and did not determine the safe loading capacity of the as-built scaffold,” according to the citation.
The bridge section was loaded with approximately 1,756 lb of employees, materials and equipment approximately 70 ft above ground when it failed, along with several multipurpose insert sections that were found to be “heavily rusted and deteriorated, affecting both structural integrity and strength,” the citation says.
Both companies were also penalized for failing to properly inspect the scaffold and its components for visible defects and effect any necessary repairs prior to each work shift. Old North State Masonry was penalized separately for failing to follow manufacturer-required 10-year ultrasonic testing protocols to assess the structural wall thickness of the scaffolding components, which were manufactured in 2005.
