Vol. 76/No. 22      June 4, 2012

It was Zamora’s first day on the job. He was pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital after falling 40 feet while doing facade restoration work on an 11-story building in the SoHo district of Manhattan. He was not wearing a safety harness.

Zamora immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico seven years ago and lived in Brooklyn with his wife and two young daughters.

Zamora “was not working in a protected area with guardrails and therefore should have been wearing a safety harness and secured it to an anchorage point,” Ryan FitzGibbon, press secretary for the city’s Department of Buildings, told the Militant by email. She added that he wasn’t given a mandatory 30-hour training course on routine safety measures, which is required before starting to work.

The DOB has issued a full Stop Work Order to the site.

Zamora was employed by Brasal Construction Corp. In March the company received a permit from the DOB for repairs to the building’s roof, windows and facade.

“He started today, he was working and unfortunately accidents happen,” Brasal employee Karla Rodriguez told the New York Daily News.

The company did not respond to requests for comment from the Militant.

In January, scaffolding contractor Steel Industries was issued a violation at the same site for failure to protect the public and property after a wrench fell eight stories and injured a pedestrian, according to city records.

In 2011 five workers were killed and 152 injured at construction sites in New York. Zamora is the fourth construction worker killed on the job here this year.

The day Zamora was killed, Arris Tunic, 34, died after falling 45 feet out of a crane at a construction site in Secaucus, N.J. The crane was working in a sloped area and fell over.
 
 
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