By Nicole Pollack
The Wisconsin State Journal
MADISON, Wis. — A construction worker was critically injured Saturday morning after falling with a beam dropped by a construction crane at the Wisconsin History Center site in Downtown Madison, authorities said.
The beam, which weighed about 28,000 pounds, was being lifted into place by two workers when it plunged 40 or 50 feet through multiple levels of the structure, Madison Fire Department Division Chief Dan Williams said.
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One of the workers fell with the beam and landed on top of it, Williams said.
“It’s still under investigation as to exactly what happened, but there was obviously a failure,” he said.
Fire crews responded to the site near the intersection of State and North Carroll streets on Capitol Square at about 9:30 a.m. Saturday. They used the crane and a technical rescue basket to recover the injured worker, who was still well above ground level, Williams said.
The worker was taken to a local hospital and was in critical condition, according to a statement from the Madison Fire Department.
Williams said he could not provide any information about the injured worker or their condition.
The other worker was not injured, Williams said, but was trapped high up on the structure, gripping the sides of another beam in what Williams described as “a very precarious position.”
Members of the Madison Fire Heavy Urban Rescue Team rescued the uninjured worker within an hour, Williams said.
Sam Hart, a cook at Teddywedgers who was working at the restaurant directly across West Mifflin Street from the construction site when the beam fell, said the sound was similar to a car crash and police cars and other emergency vehicles began arriving almost immediately.
By early afternoon, the emergency vehicles were gone, and crews were busy removing bent strips of metal from the structure and sawing through them on the ground.
The five-story, 100,000-square-foot Wisconsin History Center is scheduled to open late next year at the site of the former Wisconsin History Museum.
Findorff, the project’s contractor, said in a statement Saturday evening that work at the site has been paused while the company works with authorities to determine the cause of the incident. The statement said the injured worker is in stable condition.
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