Created: AUGUST 18, 2015
By: The Associated Press
RIO RANCHO, N.M. (AP) -
Investigators are trying to determine what led to the collapse of a six-story scaffold outside a Rio Rancho hospital that killed one construction worker and injured seven others.
New Mexico Occupational Safety and Health Administration officials were at the Rio Rancho site Wednesday, a day after 21 feet of scaffolding buckled and collapsed from the top down.
Work on a second patient tower at Presbyterian Rust Medical Center has been going on since last year.
Patty Johnson, a spokeswoman for general contractor McCarthy Building Companies, says a subcontractor built the scaffolding. She says the company promises its full support of an investigation.
Johnson says she did not know the conditions Wednesday of the injured, who were all hospitalized including three with critical injuries.
A fourth worker died at the hospital.