Three injured, one critical after scaffolding collapses

THREE men were injured, one critically, when scaffolding collapsed at a site on Dublin yesterday morning. The accident happened at St Martin's House on Waterloo Road, a short distance from the busy junction with Baggot Street.

The three men were taken to St Vincent's Hospital, where one was later discharged. The more seriously injured of the other two was last night said to be "critical but stable" in the hospital's intensive care unit.

Two of the injured men were thrown from the four storey scaffolding as it fell. The third was inside the building and is believed to have been pinned to the wall by a piece of the structure.

Initially, there were fears that people were trapped under the large pile of debris in front of the building's entrance. Firefighters and others worked furiously to clear the pile, despite fears that the rest of the scaffolding could fall.

After the accident - the sixth such collapse at a Dublin site in the last year - the Health and Safety Authority called on contractors to carry out urgent safety reviews.

In a statement, the HSA said one man had died and 10 others had been injured in similar accidents in the past year, from which a number of prosecutions were likely.

The statement also said that in inspections during 1996 half of all sites had been found to have made quite safety standards.

Waterloo Road was blocked off for a time following yesterday's accident, which happened shortly after 11.45 a.m. The collapse appears to have centred on a column of scaffolding built out from the main structure, on which a number of pallets of bricks were held.

Mr D.J. Burnett, who walked past the site just before the collapse, said he heard a loud crack and looked around to see the structure coming down.

A woman working in a nearby shop was trapped inside for half an hour before firemen helped her out.

Workers at the site who had raised the alarm praised the speedy arrival of the emergency services. Several ambulances and fire brigade units were at the scene within minutes, they said.