Construction Fatality | Wade's Working Tips

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I wanted to let you know that when you drop something from a serious height, it can hurt someone or kill someone. I found these stories today about a construction worker that was using his tape measure up on a high-rise and lost control, dropping it from the 50^th floor of a residential building on 50-70 Columbus Drive in Jersey City down on the ground where it hit a 58-year-old fellow construction worker who should have been wearing a hard-hat, but wasn’t. It was a freak accident, where a 1 pound tape measure, probably a 25’ tape, just fell over the side. The ground worker should have had a hard-hat on, but didn’t for some reason. The guy on the 50^th floor was trying to get it off of his belt when he just lost it over the side.

They figure the tape measure fell over 500 feet when it hit a piece of metal 10 feet up. The tape measure ricocheted off of the metal and hit Gary Anderson. May Gary rest in peace and I pray for his family. Gary had just taken hid hard hat off to lean into a car window to talk to someone and just pulled his head out when the tape came down at around 140 mph at that height.

Mr. Gary Anderson was delivering drywall to the site. When he got hit he immediately fell to the ground. They rushed him to the hospital where his wife and daughter were with him. He passed at 9:52AM local time.

Mr. Anderson lived in Camden County.