For a long time, I’ve been getting the sick feeling that working in construction has been getting even more dangerous. Maybe it’s just that the New York media has paid a bit more attention to the phenomena of lots more workers getting killed and injured in the wondrous Mike Bloomberg-generated construction boom in the city (not that anyone brings that up when we read about our mayor’s possible presidential campaign). But, I also think that it is getting worse.

    Which brings me to the death of Yuriy Vanchytskyy, who Monday plummeted 42 stories to his death from a Trump Soho condo building under construction. The local media has paid attention. The Times has two stories today. First, a profile of Yuriy:

At the construction site, Mr. Vanchytskyy, who neighbors and co-workers said was in his 50s, was a respected figure, one of the older and more experienced workers.

“Hard working brother; always smiling; he was happy to be working,” said Tony Morals, 41, who was cleaning up the site on Tuesday as city officials continued to investigate the accident. “Some people come to work grumpy and mad. He wasn’t one of them.”

Mr. Vanchytskyy and his wife, Natalia, who works at a home for the elderly and was recently studying to reactivate the engineering degree she earned in Ukraine, had three children, Mrs. Tambra said. A son named Yuriy and a daughter named Irena live in the New York area, she said, and another son, married with children, lives in Ukraine. Mr. Vanchytskyy had returned from a visit to him on Friday. Outside the house on Tuesday, the younger Yuriy said the family was not ready to speak to reporters; the blinds at the windows were closed.

But Mrs. Tambra and her husband, Muhammad, described how Mr. Vanchytskyy and his family had become close to them. The house reflected the changing neighborhood, with young hipsters, newly arrived with a wave of gentrification, on the top floor; the hard-working Ukrainians on the second; and the Pakistani immigrant owners on the first. The two older families barbecued together, and their children played together, the Tambras said.

“He was a very funny, very joyous person,” Mrs. Tambra said, recalling how a few months ago, when her brother came to stay with her, he teased her that he would report it to her husband: “Other man, other man, no good, no good! I tell your husband you have a boyfriend.”

    And, then, The Times has a story about the pathetic safety record of the contractor:

A contractor involved in Monday’s fatal construction accident in SoHo has a history of safety violations at projects in Manhattan and has been fined tens of thousands of dollars in penalties, according to federal records.

A worker for the contractor, DiFama Concrete, died on Monday when he fell 42 floors from the top of Trump SoHo, a condominium hotel under construction at Varick and Spring Streets.

In November 2004, another DiFama employee died when he fell 60 feet from a platform on the mast of a construction crane at what is now the Lumiere, a seven-story condominium on 53rd Street, west of Eighth Avenue.

After the 2004 accident, inspectors for the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited DiFama for failing to provide sufficient safety devices designed to prevent falls from the crane and fined the company $3,500. The city’s Buildings Department, however, determined that the “accident was caused by human error.”

City building officials are reviewing the work history of the company as they investigate Monday’s accident, in which Yuriy Vanchytskyy plunged to his death, apparently after wood forms used to hold wet concrete collapsed. The Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, has also assigned investigators to monitor the city’s inquiry into the construction worker’s death, said Daniel J. Castleman, the chief of the office’s Investigation Division.

    Even The Daily News weighs in:

Wooden supports bracing the top floors of Donald Trump’s SoHo condo tower failed to meet standards and broke while concrete was being poured – leading to Monday’s fatal collapse, city sources said Tuesday.

Forensic engineers for the city Buildings Department determined the wooden forms, built to hold concrete until it hardens, did not meet "industry standards," the sources said.

The city halted all work at the Spring St. tower as the probe moves forward. The sources said other problems at the building also may have contributed to the partial collapse.

    And to my point that this is not an isolated incident:

City data show high-rise accidents have skyrocketed over the past two years, shooting from 23 to 42 incidents. Concrete firms causing material to fall from high-rises under construction were responsible for 68% of the accidents last year, also an increase from the previous year, a city source said.

    I’m guessing that the data are even worse than that because my hunch is that there is a lot of pressure, particularly when workers are employed by non-union contractors, to not report accidents and just keep working.

    Nationally, according to The Center For Construction Research and Training, 4 workers die every day in the U.S. in construction accidents.

   How do you stop this from happening? I’m sorry to say it won’t be by hiring more inspectors or gathering more data. It will stop when contractors start going to jail when people die at work sites. If the contractor at this site had previous violations and now a worker dies, why shouldn’t the contractor be indicted for manslaughter? And put behind bars with a stiff sentence?

   That would catch peoples’ attention.