Articles Posted in Construction Accidents

Earlier this month in Bakersfield, an implosion at a decommissioned steam power plant led to the severe injury of five spectators, according to a report in New York Daily News. Construction accidents often result in serious injuries, and this incident was no different. In a parking lot at 6 a.m. near the planned implosion in California’s Central Valley, more than 1,000 people had gathered to view the destruction of the plant owned by Pacific Gas & Electric.

Soon after the plant building came crashing down, police officers heard screams for help, and one officer found a man whose leg had been severed. According to Lt. Scott Tunnicliffe, “it was a piece of shrapnel that came flying out of the explosion and came across and went through a couple of chain link fences, struck him, and impacted into a vehicle.”

The plant was decommissioned in 1986, and residents of southern California have been eagerly awaiting its implosion as new development has been planned in the area. Since 1986, the area remained relatively untouched until new plans were made for the space.

Routine work at California construction sites may seem reasonably safe, but construction accidents can often lead to serious injuries and fatalities. Last month, a construction worker died in an industrial accident in Murrieta. According to the Southwest Riverside News Network, the victim was 38-year-old Antonio Toro of Riverside. Like many other construction workers, Toro died after a forklift “flipped over and pinned him.”

Toro’s death comes quite soon after another construction fatality in Southern California. In April 2013, an Edison worker died in an accident in Menifee. The victim, 38-year-old Jose Raul Ros, had been a distribution lineman. While working on an underground vault, an explosion led to his death, according to Los Angeles’s local ABC 7 News.

Thousands of construction workers are injured on the job each year in California, and many of these injuries result in fatalities. If you or a loved one have been injured in a construction accident, you should contact an experienced construction accident lawyer today. Although you might at first assume you only have a workers’ compensation claim, you may actually be able to file additional claims for compensation.

When you are injured at work, you may wonder how you can file a lawsuit and who you can bring the lawsuit against. In many cases, if you are injured at work, you cannot sue your employer. Instead of a lawsuit, you must file a workers’ compensation claim. The workers’ compensation law and its processes are quite different from a personal injury suit.

However, if you are injured at work by someone other than your employer or fellow employees, you may be able to seek personal injury damages against the responsible party. In some cases, there may even be more than one responsible party. In those types of cases, it may be easier to make your case because you only have to make your case for liability against all of the responsible parties.Then the responsible parties must present their own evidence to show that the other party caused your injury. Generally, this “finger-pointing” can lead to a larger recovery for you, because they will essentially help you prove your case against the other party.

While injuries can occur in any type of workplace, injuries are particularly commonplace in construction and other heavy industrial environments. If you think about a construction site or other heavy industrial workplace, the dangers are immediately apparent. Such places have a lot of tools, equipment, scaffolding, and materials that can cause harm to anyone on the job site. Those items can belong to anyone on the site, because many construction and heavy industrial workplaces have a number of contractors and subcontractors present. Statistically, the more workers and more dangerous materials on the job site, the more likely that an injury will occur.