Construction company being investigated in Fort Lauderdale crane accident had multiple OSHA violations
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The Southeast Third Avenue bridge over the New River in downtown Fort Lauderdale reopened Friday morning after part of a crane collapsed Thursday afternoon, killing a construction worker and injuring three people on the ground.
Fort Lauderdale Police identified the worker Friday as 27-year-old Jorge De La Torre.
A large, blue piece of steel from a crane at the Gables Riverwalk construction site at 333 N. New River Drive E. smashed into two cars on the drawbridge, landing on top of a van and crushing the passenger side of the vehicle. The front of a Tesla was also severely damaged.
The bridge was closed to boats and cars until about 9 a.m. Friday, when the city said both car and boat traffic was restored. No signs of the accident were evident on the bridge itself Friday morning except for a remnant of caution tape.
Occupational Safety and Health Administration has opened an investigation with Phoenix Rigging & Erecting LLC, Kast Construction, LLC, and Maxim Crane Works LP, spokesperson Erika Ruthman wrote in an email Friday morning.
Kast Construction has received multiple OSHA violations over issues relating to falls and a lack of guardrails, records show.
In 2023, the company was fined two separate times, totaling over $20,000, for failing its “duty to have fall protection” standard.
Both times, investigators found that employees were walking on an “unprotected side or edge” and were “not protected from falling by the use of guardrail systems, safety net systems, or personal fall arrest systems.”
Because the investigation is open, no more details can be given, Ruthman wrote.
Phoenix Rigging & Erecting declined to give a comment. Maxim Crane Works also declined to comment, citing that the investigation is still active.
KAST Construction could not be immediately reached Thursday night or Friday morning.
Fort Lauderdale Police “are working on gathering the information for the other involved parties,” Detective Ali Adamson said.
When part of the crane fell, workers at the building were in the process of “stepping the crane,” Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue Chief Stephen Gollan said at a Thursday evening news conference, which is where sections are added to the tower crane to elevate it as the under-construction building grows taller.
Gollan said a platform that held equipment failed, sending the items from the platform down onto the bridge. The crane itself did not experience the failure, he said.
The construction worker who died “had fallen with the load off of the side of the building,” Gollan said.
The two who were hospitalized were in stable condition, one with only minor injuries, as of Thursday night. The third person who was injured refused to be taken to the hospital.
Fort Lauderdale Police Chief Bill Schultz said his department will investigate the death of the worker.
John Uustal, a trial attorney with the law firm Kelley Uustal in Fort Lauderdale who often works cases involving product defects, said this could potentially be a “$100 million case.”
“It’s one of those situations where you look at it and say, ‘How could this happen?’” he said. “It’s not supposed to happen in a modern civilized society; somebody’s doing something very wrong. And there had to have been multiple levels of failure for this to happen.
“It may have been a product failure and the product manufacturer’s at fault. It may be that the employer here on the job site was pushing the employees to do things that were dangerous.”
Crane-related incidents are not new. In August 2023, a crane collapse near Mercy Hospital in Coconut Grove killed one person and injured four others. And on Dec. 5, 2022, a construction worker fell to his death when a crane tilted over on Interstate 95.
“It does seem like it’s happening more and more,” Uustal said.
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(Staff writer Angie DiMichele contributed to this report.)
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