PATERSON, N.J. — A New Jersey construction worker was critically injured Saturday when he was impaled on a steel reinforcing bar, authorities said.
The 51-year-old man was in critical but stable condition after the incident, which Paterson fire Chief Brian McDermott called “the stuff of movies,” NorthJersey.com reported.
Firefighters said the worker fell through an opening on the eighth floor at the site in Paterson and onto a “rebar” -- one of the steel reinforcing bars used in concrete construction -- one story below, WABC-TV reported. The steel bar went through the man’s chest and hip, according to the television station.
A man fell at a construction site at 461 Market St. in Paterson on Saturday and was impaled. First responders detail the rescue. https://t.co/7u462Fh3qx
— NorthJersey.com (@northjersey) December 11, 2022
The man was left suspended in the air, NorthJersey.com reported.
“He did not slide all the way down,” deputy chief Jose David Molina, who was on the scene, told the website. “I saw the guy was alert and oriented. He was making eye contact.”
Emergency personnel received a call at 12:15 p.m. EST and arrived at the scene within three minutes, McDermott said.
The fire chief said that responders “gathered the jaws of life, metal saws, ropes and harnesses while other units brought more saws and medical equipment up to the floor.”
The construction site, an unfinished apartment complex, had no stairs above the first floor, NorthJersey.com reported.
“Basically this was a very intense incident where his life hung in the balance of minutes and seconds,” McDermott said.
“The update we got from the chief, he’s undergoing major surgery,” rescue captain Saúl Cintrón, of Rescue Company 2, told NorthJersey.com late Saturday. “Miraculously, the rebar missed all the major vital organs.”
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