Collapse site

       After self-rescue by the workers and rescue by the police, all trapped people were rescued one hour later. After diagnosis and treatment, one person suffered a fracture, and the other six had superficial injuries.

       The construction site is located at the intersection of Simingshan Road and Liaohe Road, and is the Beilun Longshun Qiujia resettlement housing construction site. According to painter Master Liu, his team was painting the exterior facade at the time. Before the incident, he vaguely felt the scaffolding shaking but did not pay much attention.

      “I just felt the ground soften under my feet, as if I had stepped into emptiness, and my whole body seemed to sink. The scaffolding beside me creaked loudly and all twisted together.” Master Liu said, “With a bang, the scaffolding collapsed, and dust rose from the ground. Fortunately, I fell into a gap, with a window right beside me, and I managed to escape through it.”

       However, the other workers were not so lucky. According to members of the Beilun Fire Brigade who were the first to arrive, the building has 17 floors in total, and the scaffolding had been erected up to the 13th floor. The scaffolding on the entire facade was crumpled like weeds, with broken, twisted, and interwoven steel pipes and wooden strips everywhere, making it impossible to climb or pass through.

Collapse site

      “Several people were pinned inside but could not climb out because the scaffolding was all tangled together; they were not just pressed by one section.” Firefighter Xiao Ding said that although it was much “lower”, the collapsed scaffolding still stood about five stories high. One group of firefighters cut the scaffolding pinning the workers from above, while another group crawled into the gaps from below to carry out the injured.

       Half an hour later, the first buried male worker was rescued. Subsequently, two other injured people were rescued one after another, one of whom had his left chest stained red with blood and was seriously injured. At the same time, the rescue team organized by the construction site also joined in cutting and clearing. In addition to two people who climbed out on their own, two others were rescued by workers.

       At 12:30 noon yesterday, “Beilun Housing and Urban-Rural Development V” posted on Weibo about the incident, saying that during exterior wall painting operations on Building 15 of Bid Section 2 of the Longshun resettlement plot, the external scaffolding on the north and west sides partially collapsed; the project is constructed by Beilun Development Zone Dagang Company and built by Ningbo Residential Construction Group.

       As for the cause of the accident, according to workers at the scene, it is suspected that there were omissions in the installation and fixing of the scaffolding, and it was “not particularly firm”.

       The reporter consulted an industry insider, who analyzed that the main reason for scaffolding collapse is failure to calculate and erect or dismantle according to regulations, but rather relying on habit and feeling. The most direct cause is mostly failure to pay attention to or even omission of hard ties, causing the scaffolding to tilt and deform, and then collapse. At present, the construction site has been suspended, and local relevant departments have intervened in the investigation.