DILLON, Colo. –
Investigators with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration are now trying to learn why a Loveland Ski Area lift maintenance worker died while working Thursday morning.
OSHA investigators tell FOX31 that Adam Lee, 40, was working on the Magic Carpet, a piece of equipment that helps beginners get up a hill, when the accident happened. They wouldn’t divulge more details.
“It was a shock,” Erika Lee told FOX31, when she learned that her husband of 14 years had died.
Erika and Adam have three children together, two girls who are 12 and nine years old and a boy who is five.
“He just really loved those kids,” Erika said. “Everything was about the kids. We always did family things together.”
But they’d been a part a lot the past two years. During the winter seasons, Adam lived in Colorado and worked at Loveland, while Erika and the children lived in Michigan, where she’s from.
Finally, this summer Adam was promoted to a lift maintenance worker and the rest of the family moved to Colorado.
“We struggled,” Erika said, talking about their time apart. “Anyone who knows, knows we struggled and we fought really hard to stay together as a family. We didn’t just say OK, we’re going to call it quits.”
Now Erika wants answers as to what happened in the accident that took Adam’s life. She told FOX31 that Loveland Ski Area wouldn’t give her many details about how Adam died.
Loveland Ski Area sent FOX31 the following statement:
“At approximately 11:00 a.m. on Thursday, Dec. 28, a Loveland Ski Area employee was involved in a fatal accident while working. Ski Patrol was in the area and responded immediately. The circumstances of the incident are being investigated. Loveland Ski Area extends its deepest sympathies to the family and friends affected by this tragic event.”
“I didn’t say bye to him that morning,” Erika said. “I was rushing out the door, and I just…I was wondering how I was going to get to work and I didn’t say bye to him and that just went through my mind," she said. “It’s hard to imagine he’s never going to walk through that door again,” she said.
OSHA investigators said it could take up to six months for their investigation to be complete. They said deadly accidents involving workers Loveland and other Colorado ski areas are rare.
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LOVELAND SKI AREA, Colo. —
A maintenance employee died while working at Loveland Ski Area on Thursday morning.
Officials said the employee, identified by family members as 40-year-old Adam Lee, was involved in an accident about 11 a.m. It did not say where the accident took place.
The Clear Creek County Coroner’s Office said an autopsy was scheduled for Saturday.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating the accident. A spokesman said the investigation will take six months.
Loveland officials said Ski Patrol responded but Lee was pronounced dead. The circumstances of what led to the accident are under investigation.
The hours of operation at the ski area will not be impacted on Friday, officials said.
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KUSA, CO -
Federal authorities launched an investigation Friday into the death of a Loveland Ski Area worker who got caught up in a “magic carpet” lift he was working on, 9Wants to Know has learned.
Two investigators from the Denver office of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration spent part of the day at the ski area in Clear Creek County, said Herb Gibson, the federal agency’s area director.
“We were there first thing this morning,” Gibson told 9NEWS. “We’re trying to determine the cause and exactly what happened in this incident and, obviously, prevent it from happening again.”
A “magic carpet” lift is, essentially, a conveyor belt installed at snow-level. Skiers stand on it on their skis or snowboards and are transported uphill.
They are often used on beginner hills.
Gibson said the lift involved in Thursday’s deadly accident was “very small” and not in use while the worker was performing maintenance on it.
“The person got caught up in some of the equipment,” Gibson said. “This is a tragic accident during the holidays.”
The identity of the 40-year-old man who died after an accident around 11 a.m. Thursday has not been released because efforts were still underway to notify his family, Carrie Blackwell, chief deputy coroner in Clear Creek County, told 9NEWS.
An autopsy is scheduled Saturday.
The Colorado Passenger Tramway Safety Board regulates ski lifts and is responsible for investigating any death or injury that could be the result of an equipment malfunction. An engineer conducted an inspection that “revealed proper functioning of the lift,” said Lee Rasizer, spokesman for the tramway safety board.
As a result, the tramway safety board won’t be involved in the investigation.
OSHA is part of the U.S. Department of Labor and is charged with investigating workplace accidents.
Gibson said it is likely to be at least a few months before OSHA investigators reach a conclusion about what happened.
He said the operators of the ski area have been cooperating with investigators.
John Sellers, the marketing director at Loveland Ski Area, described the death as a “fatal accident while working” in a written statement but did not shed further light on the incident.
“Ski Patrol was in the area and responded immediately,” Sellers said in the statement. “The circumstances of the incident are being investigated.”
Loveland Ski Area opened for the season on Oct. 20.
In March, the ski area’s administrators came under criticism from Clear Creek County Coroner Chris Hegmann after he learned that employees moved the body of a dead skier before investigators arrived at the scene. That man died after crashing into a tree.
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GEORGETOWN – State tramway safety board engineers investigated a lift at Loveland Ski Area and determined that it was functioning properly and unrelated to the death of an resort employee on Thursday.
The ski area said its ski patrol was in the area when an accident happened around 11 a.m. Thursday and responded immediately.
Resort spokesman John Sellers said the circumstances of the accident, which occurred while the employee was working, were under investigation and declined to give details.
“Loveland Ski Area extends its deepest sympathies to the family and friends affected by this tragic event,” a statement read.
The name of the employee has not been released, and local law enforcement authorities haven’t released further information.
IVINS, UTAH —
Officials have released the cause of a fire that consumed an Ivins home on Christmas Eve, leaving one woman and possibly two dogs dead while injuring another woman.
Fire investigators determined that the cause of the fire, which started in one of the rear bedrooms, was “electrical in nature,” Todd Hohbein, inspector and fire investigator with the State of Utah, said. Multiple engines respond to battle a blaze at a home on 100 North that killed an elderly woman and injured her daughter Sunday evening, Ivins, Utah, Dec. 24, 2017 | Photo by Cody Blowers, St. George News
“It appears there was an electrical fault or failure in the bedroom where the victim resided – one that had nothing to do with Christmas or holiday lighting,” Hohbein said.
A fire investigator is called in whenever there is a death involved. Hohbein responded in Ivins Sunday night to process the scene and to determine where the fire started as well as the cause.
Firefighters and emergency responders were dispatched just before 7 p.m. Christmas Eve to the structure fire, involving a home on West 100 North, with initial reports stating two individuals were trapped inside, Santa Clara Fire Chief Dan Nelson said.
Once on scene, fire personnel discovered there was an elderly woman, who was bedridden, trapped inside one of the rear bedrooms in the residence. The woman subsequently died in the blaze, seemingly due to severe burns and smoke inhalation, according to officials.
“Sadly, she never made it out of that room alive,” Nelson said.
Earlier in the evening, the woman’s daughter had arrived at the home to find heavy smoke coming from the rear of the residence. Knowing her mother would be unable to evacuate on her own, she ran into the home and reached the back bedroom where she was overcome by the heavy smoke.
She then ran outside for air, with the intent of going back into the residence to get her mom out, Nelson said.
Once outside, the daughter encountered responding officers and paramedics who stopped her from entering the house for a second time, in spite of her objections, Nelson said, and for good reason.
“It was very good they stopped her, because there was heavy fire involvement by the time we arrived, with dense smoke and with additional oxygen coming through the home, the fire grew exponentially, so she likely would not have made it back out the second time,” Nelson said.
Firefighters were already making their way to the rear bedroom as EMT’s assessed the daughter’s condition before she was transported to Dixie Regional Medical Center in St. George to be treated for smoke inhalation and burns.
Firefighters continued to tend to the scene for nearly four hours, making sure all embers were completely extinguished and any hot spots that could reignite were out, Nelson said, adding: “there was a great deal of clean-up involved, and we were chasing fire all over, so we wanted to make sure it was out.”
According to initial reports, two of the four dogs in the home at the time of the incident were able to make it out safely. It is believed that the other two dogs died in the fire, but that is preliminary information only, Hohbein said.
The Santa Clara Fire Department, Ivins City Fire Department, St. George Fire Department and Santa Clara-Ivins City Police were among those agencies responding to the scene, bringing engines, ladder trucks and ambulances that lined the street for more than a block Sunday evening.
This report is based on statements from police or other emergency responders and may not contain the full scope of findings.
OLD BUILDINGS ARE DEATH TRAPS IN NEW YORK CITY
December is the peak
fire month and there are many potential causes: defective electrical
circuits, overloaded extension cords, heaters placed near combustibles
as people try to protect from the record-setting cold, children playing with matches/fire, etc.
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COWARDS: BLAME THE CHILD FOR STARTING THE FIRE!
A child playing with a stove ignited a massive fire Thursday night that killed at least 12 people, including children, at an apartment building in the Bronx borough of New York City, officials said.
Daniel Nigro, the FDNY’s commissioner, told reporters Friday that a 3 1/2-year-old child was fiddling around with a stove on the first floor of the building when the fire broke out around 7 p.m.
The mother of the child left the apartment with her two children, leaving the door open which allowed the blaze to spread quickly, he said.
More than 160 firefighters responded to the four-alarm fire in the Bronx, just a block from the borough's famed zoo. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
Nigro said the incident was the worst loss of life caused by fires in the city, excluding the September 11 terror attacks, since 87 people were killed at a social club fire in the Bronx in 1990.
More than 170 firefighters were on the scene of the four-alarm fire, located at a five-story walk-up apartment house in the Bronx, just a block from the borough's famed zoo, FOX5 New York reported. The firefighters worked to battle the blaze in temperatures as low as 15 degrees.
BRONX FIRE'S MULTIPLE VICTIMS INCLUDE YOUNG CHILDREN AND ADULTS
The victims included children aged 1, 2, 7 and an unidentified boy, the FDNY announced. The other victims were three women aged 19, 37, 63, one unidentified woman and four unidentified men. Authorities have not named the victims. Dozens of other victims were rescued with injuries but were expected to recover.
The New York Times reported a woman, her two daughters and her niece were among the dead. They were identified as Karen Stewart-Francis, 37, and her daughters: Kylie Francis, 2, and Kelly Francis, 7 and her niece Shawntay Young, 19.
Smoke rises from a window of a burned apartment building in the Bronx. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
Stewart-Francis' mother, told the newspaper that 13 family members resided in the apartment building.
“My daughter. My grandchildren. Tell me, what am I going to do?” Ambrozia Stewart said. “Four people I lost.”
The building had no elevator, the Associated Press reported, citing city records. Fire escapes were visible on the facade of the building.
The fire department responded to emergency calls within three minutes.
Witnesses described the scene of the fire and the panic from the building's tenants.
One witness, Xanral Collins, told the New York Post he saw a father running toward the building, but was unable to enter.
"I saw him screaming, 'My babies are dead! My babies are dead!'" Collins said.
Jamal Flicker, a witness told the New York Post he heard screams for help.
"The smoke was crazy, people screaming, 'Get out!" Flicker said. "I heard a woman yelling, 'We're trapped, help!'"
"I heard a woman yelling, 'We're trapped, help!'" - Jamal Flicker, a witness, said.
Neighborhood resident Robert Gonzalez, who has a friend who lives in the building, told the Associated Press she got out on a fire escape as another resident fled with five children.
"When I got here, she was crying," Gonzalez said.
Kwabena Mensah, who feared his son, U.S. Army soldier Emmanuel Mensah, was one of the victims of the devastating fire, confirmed his death to PIX11 on Friday.
Mensah's uncle, Twum Bredu, told The New York Times that his nephew "brough four people out. When he went to bring a fifth person out, the fire caught up with him."
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, at a news conference Thursday, advised to "hold your families close and keep these families here in the Bronx in your prayers."
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At least 12 people were killed when a fire fueled by gusty winds tore through a century-old apartment building in the Bronx on a frigid Thursday night, New York City officials said. It was the deadliest fire in the city in more than a quarter-century.
In addition to the deaths, four people were critically injured and two people sustained non-life-threatening injuries, Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a news conference late Thursday. The youngest among the dead was 1 year old, the oldest over 50.
“Tonight in the Bronx we’ve seen the worst fire tragedy in at least a quarter of a century,’’ the mayor said on Twitter late Thursday. “It is unspeakable, and families have been torn apart.”
The first emergency call came at 6:51 p.m. for a fire in a five-story apartment building at 2363 Prospect Avenue in the Belmont neighborhood, a spokesman for the New York City Fire Department said. The department responded in three minutes, the mayor said, and firefighters were able to rescue 12 people.
The fire began on the first floor but quickly spread throughout the building, as the wind fed oxygen to the flames. The people who died were on various floors, the fire commissioner, Daniel A. Nigro, said.
The blaze grew to five-alarm status, and more than 160 firefighters responded. By the time Mr. de Blasio spoke, around 10 p.m., the flames had been brought under control.
The cause of the fire was not yet clear. But December is the peak fire month and there are many potential causes: defective electrical circuits, overloaded extension cords, heaters placed near combustibles as people try to protect from the record-setting cold.
It was a bitterly cold night, with temperatures in the teens, and the wind chill made it feel below zero. Water leaking from fire hoses froze in streaks on the concrete, and displaced residents walked around draped in American Red Cross blankets. Three young girls were whisked into a neighboring building after climbing down a fire escape with no shoes or coats.
Officials said they were opening up the nearby Grace H. Dodge vocational high school as a reception center for people who needed housing and other services. People looking for relatives who lived in the building were also told to go to the school, or to call 311.
Luz Hernandez said she first realized something was wrong when the smell of burning rubber filled her apartment on the fourth floor, followed by smoke so thick that the room turned pitch-black. She summoned her husband and two sons, 11 and 16, to the window, and they descended the front fire escape as smoke rose near them. Photo
Evacuees from a deadly fire in the Bronx on Thursday. Credit David Dee Delgado for The New York Times
Later, Ms. Hernandez said in Spanish, she saw the charred bodies of two women who lived together and their two young daughters being carried away on stretchers.
Through the closed windows of a building next door, the smoke seeped into a fifth-floor apartment where Ana Santiago, 25, was cooking dinner.
Ms. Santiago said she called 911 and ran downstairs with her 4-year-old son, knocking on neighbors’ doors as she went. When she reached the street, she saw a man lying on the ground, she said, pointing to a patch of sidewalk where glass shards lay like snow. She could not tell if he was alive or dead.
“I saw the body, I almost passed out,” she said.
Down the street, under a sign welcoming visitors to Little Italy, Dianna Reyes wailed as she hopped out of a Red Cross vehicle. She said that she had escaped with her daughter and pulled a neighbor’s two children from the fire, but that she had to leave other children behind.
“I had one on my front and one on my back,” Ms. Reyes said, sobbing. “I couldn’t carry the rest of them.” Photo
Thieron Diallo, 59, a Guinean immigrant who lived in a basement apartment, said the tenants of the building — a five-story walk-up near East 187th Street, close to the Bronx Zoo — were a diverse set, including Africans, West Indians and Hispanics.
The building, constructed of plaster and brick, was not fireproof. It was built in 1916 and had more than 20 units, according to property records.
City records appeared to indicate that as of Thursday, the building had six open violations, including one for a defective smoke detector on the first floor. That was the floor where the fire began, Commissioner Nigro said.
The 12 confirmed fatalities made the fire the deadliest since an inferno at the Happy Land social club — less than a mile from Thursday’s blaze — killed 87 people in 1990. It surpassed the toll from a fire a decade ago, in March 2007, when an overheated cord to a space heater caused a fire that tore through a four-story house in the Bronx and killed 10 people, nine of them children.
Elected officials — including Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo; Ruben Diaz Jr., the Bronx borough president; and Rafael Salamanca Jr., the neighborhood’s City Council member — took to Twitter late Thursday to offer their condolences. Mr. Cuomo said he was “closely monitoring” the situation.
Kwabena Mensah, 62, said he had visited four hospitals looking for his son, Emmanuel Mensah, who lives on the third floor of the building. Six others who live in the apartment evacuated safely and were gathered at the elder Mr. Mensah’s home nearby, he said, but his son was nowhere to be found.
Emmanuel, 28, was stationed in Virginia with the Army and had returned to the Bronx just a week ago for the holidays.
At Prospect Avenue and East 187th Street, Kenneth Kodua stood in a corner store, staring in disbelief at the plastic takeout bag in his hand. He had gone to a nearby restaurant to buy food, he said, telling his roommate he would be back soon. When he returned 20 minutes later, firefighters had swarmed the building and told him he could not enter.
“Just 20 minutes. I told my roommate I’m going to buy food. Within 20 minutes …” he said, trailing off.
Mr. Kodua, 37, said he had called his roommate more than a dozen times, to no avail.
“The phone is ringing, but nothing,” he said, struggling to form words, his eyes glazed. He turned away, toward a deli shelf, tapping his hand on cans of cat food.
“Oh my God,” he repeated to himself. “Oh my God.”
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Thursday, December 28, 201
BELMONT, Bronx (WABC) -- At least 12 people were killed, including at least one baby, in a large apartment building fire in the Bronx on Thursday night.
The 5-alarm fire broke out just before 7 p.m. on Prospect Avenue near East 187 St. on the first floor of the five-story building. The flames quickly spread up to the fifth floor. The building is described as "non-fireproof" and is highly combustible.
PHOTOS from the scene:
More than 170 firefighters responded to the scene.
The identities of the victims have not yet been released, although Mayor Bill de Blasio said one of the victims is as young as 1 year old. The oldest victim is believed to be over the age of 50. Three of the victims are members of the same family.
"They were burned, even little kids on the stretchers, burned," a resident said.
There are also several other people seriously injured, four are said to be in critical condition. Two people were rescued from the fire and are expected to survive.
The patients were taken to Jacobi Medical Center and St. Barnabas Hospital.
The fire was brought under control just after 9 p.m. The scene is described as having a very heavy smoke condition. The victims perished on every floor of the building.
"In a department that's certainly no stranger to tragedy we're shocked by this loss," FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro said.
The Office of Emergency Management and the MTA are sending buses to the location to accommodate residents that have been evacuated from the building.
The mayor quickly arrived at the scene to receive a briefing on the tragedy.
"This is the worst fire tragedy we have seen in this city in at least a quarter century," Mayor de Blasio said during a press conference at the scene. "Based on the information we have now, this will rank as one of the worst losses of life to a fire in many, many years."
Officials give update on tragic Bronx fire that left at least 12 people dead.
Governor Andrew Cuomo also expressed his sympathy for the victims Thursday night.
The cause of the fire is not yet known.
