Demolition company gets $101,000 in fines after Civic Center death.
X-Treme Demolition Inc., a Grand Rapids-based company, has been fined $101,000 after a worker was killed Aug. 1 during demolition of Holland’s Civic Center.
Fines were issued Nov. 28 from the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which had been investigating since the day after the incident. X-Treme was hired by GO Construction, which is the general contractor hired by the city of Holland for the $14.15 million Civic Center renovation. The company could not be reached Dec. 28 for comment.
A floor collapse killed Ruben Gomez-Vazques, 38, and injured 41-year-old Rafael Hernandez-Alvarez.
Gomez-Vazques and Hernandez-Alvarez were using a sledgehammer and jackhammer to knock down stairs that had already been pre-cut to release the rebar from the larger sections of concrete.
The two men were on the second floor when it collapsed from underneath them. During the fall, Gomez-Vazques was trapped among the falling slabs of concrete, according to the police report regarding the incident, obtained by The Sentinel through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Hernandez-Alvarez told police at the scene that both he and Gomez-Vazques were wearing harnesses and helmets, and the harnesses were hooked into a safety retractor.
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