Two men die when wall falls near mall

BY BRAD A. HODGES
SALISBURY POST

A gust of wind may have caused the accident about 1:20 p.m. Officials confirmed the death of Marc Richard Swaze, 29, of Taylors, S.C. Swaze was a self-employed subcontractor for ADF Construction Corp. of Amherst, N.Y.

Swaze had hired the other two victims, Concord Police Sgt. Wendell Rummage said. Police have not released the name of the second worker who died because his family has not been told.

The third victim, Carlos Alvarez Gonzalez, 22, of Greenville, S.C., was in fair condition with head injuries this morning at NorthEast Medical Center.

The men were helping build a Discount Tire Co. store on Concord Mills Boulevard.

Several other workers witnessed the accident. Police arrived from a precinct office in the Concord Mills mall within a minute, Rummage said.

State labor officials will inspect the actions of ADF and any subcontractors at the job site, department spokesman Greg Cook said. The department probably will issue a final report in four to six weeks.

“We look at several variables,” Cook said. “We’ll look at how the wall was built, what it was built of, how it was shored up and the training and employee practices.”

The company that employed the workers had no record of safety violations in North Carolina, according to state Labor Department records.

It was not clear where the men were standing when the wall fell. When all four walls of a building are not complete, the structure is unstable and the concrete blocks do not have a lot of horizontal strength, said Scott McAnulty, an inspector with the Cabarrus County Department of Development Services. Even a light gust of wind can force a wall down, he said.

The bodies of the two dead workers were removed after safety officials determined the remaining structure was sound. Gonzalez, who suffered a serious head injury, was taken to NorthEast Medical Center and was in stable condition, said Allison Smith, a relief supervisor with Cabarrus County Emergency Management Services.

ADF construction crews planned to further secure the standing walls Thursday night and return today to decide what to do with the structure, said Maria Faust, a spokesman for the Concord Fire Department.

Steven Weiss, ADF’s vice president and corporate counsel, said late Thursday the company had few details about what happened.

“We are saddened by the accident and express our deepest condolences to the families,” Weiss said. “This is very upsetting to us; we have built a relationship with our people down there.”

Throughout North Carolina, 44 people died in construction-related accidents in 1998, the last year for which data is available, state labor statistics show. In 1997, 39 people died.

Last year Rowan County was among five N.C. counties with the highest number of construction-related deaths. As a result, state labor officials have begun meeting with contractors and visiting construction sites here unannounced.

Cook says inadequate safety training and a lack of proper safety equipment are common at construction sites.

“We feel this program comes at a good time,” Cook said. “We feel all fatalities are preventable.”

The Associated Press contributed to this article.