In Bleak Days for Builders, Lessons in Saving Your Life
At a time of high anxiety, a primer on protection.
MANUEL ARRANGO, a construction mechanic, works high above the pavement, toiling over masonry, brickwork, and waterproofing. On Monday night, at a training session for scaffold workers held in a church in Westchester Square in the northeast Bronx, Mr. Arrango also did a turn — literally — as a fashion model.
A burly man who this evening was wearing a denim jacket with a gold chain over his beige T-shirt, he slipped his sneakers through the leg loops of a blue safety harness, then pulled the shoulder straps over his broad shoulders. After a few adjustments were made, he strutted and pivoted in the aisle of the church as though he were on a catwalk in Milan. From the audience came cheers and hoots and — what would you expect from a roomful of construction workers? — a provocative whistle.
Despite the light-heartedness of Mr. Arrango’s performance, the overall mood at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church that evening was not jovial. Monday was the first day of Construction Safety Week, an annual campaign held by the city’s Department of Buildings, and this year’s program came at a grim time for the construction industry.
In recent months, a rash of fatal construction accidents have occurred in the city, including the crane collapse that killed seven people on East 51st Street on March 15. On April 22, Patricia Lancaster resigned as buildings commissioner under a cloud of controversy. Read more..
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