A construction worker was injured at the Smith–Ninth Street subway station in Gowanus on Wednesday afternoon when he was hit in the head with a section of falling scaffolding, transit officials said.
Workers were dismantling scaffolding underneath the elevated train hub when a section broke loose and fell several stories, beaning the guy in the brain case, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
Emergency medical services personnel responded to a 2:31 pm 911 call, treated the fellow on-site, and drove him to Lutheran Medical Center, according to the Fire Department.
The injured worker is an employee of contractor Fox Industries, a transit rep said. A man who answered the phone at Fox Industries on Wednesday afternoon said he had no information about the incident.
The laborer was wearing a helmet and never lost consciousness, according to a Transportation Authority spokeswoman.
The work at the 81-year-old station is apparently a continuation of the botched $41-million overhaul that shuttered the stop for two years and caused it to reopen with cardboard signs in the place of mosaics.
It is not the first time recently that the world’s tallest transit hub has threatened death from above. Scaffolding fell from the station onto a dump truck in September 2013. No one was injured in that incident.
