Man found dead in collapsed tower
By Will Hoover
Advertiser Staff Writer
| |||
|
|||
| |||
| |||
The worker trapped when a 120-foot-tall cooling tower collapsed this morning at Campbell Industrial Park has been found dead.
Capt. Robert Main, spokesman for the Honolulu Fire Department, said the body was found about 3:15 p.m.
Search and rescue efforts had been under way since the tower collapsed shortly after 8 a.m.
Two men were in the tower at the time.
The men are employed by A.G. Transport of California, specialists in industrial demolition, and working locally with Sans Construction of Hawaii.
Main said the decades-old cooling tower was being “pre-weakened” by the two demolition workers. Main likened the procedure to lumberjacks notching a tree in order for it to fall over in a specific direction. He said the workers were about five minutes away from pulling the tower over via cable and heavy equipment when the two heard a “creak or pop of some kind.”
At that point, the tower collapsed. One man made it out, one didn't.
“He did not survive,” said Main, who said earlier reports that the worker had made it out and then went back inside the structure were inaccurate.
“He didn’t make it out. He may have got hung up on something, or for some reason he may have gotten turned around. But he didn’t make it out.”
The search was hampered by the instability of the tons of rubble, Main said.
“We haven’t heard any signs of life coming from the structure — like someone calling out or any moans or anything like that. We only know the general area where he may be,” Main said earlier.
He said an urban search and rescue dog was on the scene to assist in locating the fallen worker.
The search requires heavy equipment painstakingly removing steel from the top of the pile one piece at a time, similar to a giant game of pick-up sticks, said Main.
Two HFD towers were erected so that the process could be monitored from two directions by HFD personnel who could order the area to be cleared immediately should the structure appear to be on the verge of caving in.
Main said the idea was not to remove the man from the rubble, but to remove the rubble from the man — which is safer, but it takes time.
Some 70 people were involved in the effort to remove the tons of steel rubble — including more than three dozen HFD personnel, as well as workers from the demolition and construction crews, as well as others from Hawaiian Cement, Main said.
The tower is owned by Hawaiian Cement.
Main said the company, which operates a quarry in Halawa Valley is in the process of clearing out the Kalaeloa facility since it no longer manufactures cement at the site.
Red Cross volunteers are providing meals to rescue workers at the scene and Red Cross crisis counselors are also on hand.