Only quick reactions saved this man.
Less than a week after a woman was killed on a London street when a pallet of bricks fell from a tower crane, a man has had a narrow escape as a chunk of concrete flew from a London demolition site, missing him by inches.
According to reports in the Daily Mail newspaper, the incident took place at Robin Hood Gardens in Tower Hamlets.
The contractor involved is Chelmsford-based Northeast Demolition, a member of the National Federation of Demolition Contractors. DemolitionNews understands that investigators from the Health & Safety Executive – the same team that is investigating the death of a pedestrian killed nearby by a falling pallet of bricks just a few days ago – who have described the incident as a near miss.
According to Northeast Demolition, there was a 15 metre exclusion zone set in place for a particularly delicate and tricky element of the demolition. Furthermore, there was a temporary road closure in place.
Northeast Demolition’s Ronnie Mould – a 30 year industry veteran – says he was shocked at just how far a piece of concrete had been projected. “We had adhered to the NFDC high reach guidance and followed protocols on exclusion zones but this piece of concrete – the size of a football – was still ejected,” he says. “This has been a big learning curve for us, and we can only hope that our fellow demolition contractors can learn from our experience.”
