I actually have been out of town so I wasn’t in NYC when the crane fell on the East Side. But, yesterday, the death toll in the crane collapse reached seven people, six out of seven of them were construction workers. Back in January, it struck me that there was a real increase in the deaths and injuries being suffered by construction workers in NYC, all victims of the "great" real estate boom that politicians of all stripes have been celebrating (and, as well, collecting campaign cash from the real estate industry).

    The construction industry, overall, is one of the most dangerous in the country, relative to the number of workers employed. Mary Watters of The Center for Construction Research and Training sent me these facts, soon-to-be-released in an update to the Construction Chart Book:

In 2005, the construction industry had 1,243 (21.7%) of the total 5,734 work-related deaths in the United States, a disproportionately high share given that construction employment accounted for only 8% of the overall workforce.

 

In 2005, falls were the leading cause of death in construction, accounting for about one-third of all work-related deaths, followed by transportation incidents and contact with objects…. Falls ranked as the number one cause of deaths, but as the second-leading cause of nonfatal injuries.

    Today, there is more about what might have caused the collapse:

A prime suspect in Saturday’s East Side crane collapse — a spectacular disaster across two Manhattan blocks that has now claimed seven lives and is expected to cost untold millions — is a $50 piece of nylon webbing that investigators suspect may have broken while hoisting a six-ton piece of steel.

    $50 of nylon for human life…

    And there is also a heartbreaking tale of two of the workers, whose bodies were recovered yesterday:

Two of those found on Monday, Santino Gallone and Clifford Canzona, were construction workers, and throngs of construction employees had left work across the city to wait at the site of the collapse and pay their respects. When the bodies of Mr. Gallone and Mr. Canzona were pulled from the rubble, the workers fell silent, and lifted their hard hats in a grim salute…

    Mr. Gallone, 37, who went by the nickname “Santy,” had been an accomplished baseball player who set records while playing at Fordham University, including being hit by more pitches than any other batter. He also played in the minor leagues before becoming a construction worker, a university spokesman said.

Mr. Gallone’s wife, Jessica, had been anxiously waiting for word about her husband on Monday morning in the Starbucks at East 50th Street and Second Avenue, which had become a command center of sorts for reporters, rescue workers and family members. Shortly before 11 a.m., after she got the news, a group of construction workers formed a human chain from the Starbucks front door to a waiting van, shielding Ms. Gallone as she walked to the vehicle, head bowed. She and her husband lived on Long Island with their firstborn, an 18-month-old girl.

Mr. Gallone was beloved among his crews, his co-workers said. He had worked his way up, becoming a supervisor who clocked workers in and out of sites, but he also worked alongside his crew members, earning their deep respect.

    And his co-worker:

Mr. Canzona, 45, came from a family of construction workers. His father, Lawrence Canzona, began working in the business in 1947, said his mother, Nile Canzona, 81, who spoke by phone from her home in East Northport on Long Island.

Three of Mrs. Canzona’s four sons followed in their father’s footsteps, she said, learning the perilous business of climbing cranes and pouring concrete, laying bricks and pushing buildings skyward.

“Everyone loves him,” Mrs. Canzona said a few hours before her son’s body was found. “He never says a bad word about anybody. He can’t even step on a spider. He always puts them outside. He was always so sensitive, always like that.”

After the accident on Saturday, two of Mr. Canzona’s brothers, Steve and Chris, rushed to the scene, and stayed until 3 a.m. They winced as firefighters poured water onto the rubble, imagining their brother trapped and freezing. They went home, an hour’s drive, and returned at 8 a.m. on Sunday, waiting until midnight and agonizing over the rescue effort, which seemed to them to be painfully slow.