Calgary Construction Hazards October 6 2009 Ovation Tower

On August 1, 2009 a 3-year old child was killed by a car sized piece of sheet metal in the city of Calgary. Have the announced surprise inspections of construction sites resulted in an improvement of safety? You decided from this video.
At approximately 5:30pm on October 6, 2009 I called 911 to report a large sheet of wood and several pieces hanging off a 15/16 story balcony under construction.
Shortly after calling 911 I turned on my camera and began recording the event, hoping that the rope holding the wood would not give way. Unfortunately, that hope didnt last long and after seeing pieces of wood fly off the building I called 911 to update the situation. As can be seen in the video pieces start to fly off including a 7 to 9 foot (piece of wood) that is about 4 to 5 feet wide. All the while workers were present and vehicles driving past and people walking in the area.
The fire department arrived, after a total of 3 two by fours and a massive sheet of ply wood (or mdf) went off the balcony I removed the audio feed since I had to leave my phone number with 911, which is unfortunately since in the full video you can hear some of the wood crash on the ground not bad for a camera on video, but concerning since you can see from the video how high up I am and all my windows were closed.
While someone could have been killed from this, no one was hurt.
The construction site is the Ovation Tower located at Spruce Place SW, near 33 Spruce Place SW.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Calgary
• Construction Hazards
• Westgate Park
• Ovation Tower
• debris flying

[7bluebell14]

that is completely and utterly unacceptable.

[noimchucknorris]

i put the windows in on this site. ulrich is the problem here, he is the superintendant and he could care less about the safety of the employees or the people walking innocently below. in fact i had been in an unsafe situation due to a lack of structual engineering and he had the nerve to make a joke to a forman about how long it would take me to fall off the building. i heard about this from the safety insepector later, now there's a guy you really want to work for!?!?!

[nfldkillboy]

Worst video camera work ever.

[TheLizardLicks]

this is what happens when you import 500,000 ching chong wing wang.

[sackville10]

i gave up carpentry when i moved out here from n.s because everytime i put up a fuss about safty regs i got fired and the fucking albertan code is a joke .

[Z3R0RDi3]

unreal.. iv just reently been assigned to this site about a week ago and havent seen the safty guy once, havent had an orientation, and frequently see guys without their hardhats ppe, the contractor is a joke therefore safety is a joke..if you go on an elisdon, stuart olson, and especially CENTRON site this would never have been a problem

[garycalgary]

it's obvious someone don't give 2 shits about safety

until something happens or they get their asses sued or someone gets killed

[noimchucknorris]

lol, no it wouldnt. stupid.

[Treped]

Well it seems pretty clear who jer1114 works for and perhaps forman of that site or possibly safety inspector?

So tell it to the family of the poor little girl that was killed and explain to them that she should have been more carefull, worn the propper safety gear while walking past the building and clearly all her fault for getting killed then shrug your shoulders and say accidents happen, you know shit happens get over it.

And this attitude is why the problem will continue to happen