Julia Sage

@the.julia.sage

Today around 2:30 p.m. a construction site on a sewer line was halted when a support wall collapsed, injuring a worker on the corner of Evergreen Avenue and Decatur Street in Bushwick. All construction workers were evacuated from the sewer. 

According to Angie Martinez, who works at a pizzeria joint called Crust Brooklyn just on the corner of the scene, fire trucks and an ambulance arrived between 2:30-2:45 p.m. to assess the situation and take the worker to a hospital. 

Construction site and collapsed support wall.

The worker appeared to have been injured in his right leg and it was bandaged up. However, Martinez says the man was conscious and did not seem to be in extreme pain or in a life-threatening situation. The emergency vehicles stayed in the area for approximately 20 minutes before leaving the scene. 

There were multiple support walls down in the ground lining the sides of the trench the workers were laboring in. The purpose of the walls was to keep the dirt on either side of the trench from collapsing down into the space.

Construction site in front of Public School 45.

Construction workers refused to give a comment. The cause of the incident is still unknown, as is the city’s official stance on steps to be taken to prevent further incidents in the future.

On August 1, this same crossroad had a massive sinkhole, leaving a car teetering on its edge with a mother and two young children trapped inside. The sinkhole measured 8 by 16 feet, with a depth of 12 feet. 

“[With] all the construction that’s going on in Bushwick — shit like this is bound to happen,” commented YoungQuiroz, a user of the Citizen App responding to the live alert from the scene.

Crossroads of Evergreen Avenue and Decatur Street near construction site.

Photos by Mark Davis for Bushwick Daily.

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