Three people died and at least eight others were injured Saturday afternoon when part of a 25-foot aluminum scaffold fell in high winds from the 43rd floor of the John Hancock Center onto Chestnut Street, flattening three cars.
As hundreds of frightened pedestrians ran for cover, the remaining scaffolding banged repeatedly into the building’s south side, shattering dozens of windows and sending shards of glass and other debris raining onto North Michigan Avenue and nearby streets.
Three women were killed in the incident, two in their 20s and one in her 30s, said a spokesman for the Cook County medical examiner’s office. Fire Commissioner James Joyce said all three had been occupants of damaged cars, but police spokesman Pat Camden could not confirm that.
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The scaffold section fell at 1:45 p.m., but it was hours before firefighters and employees of the scaffold company could reach through shattered windows to secure the remaining flapping metal to the building with steel wire amid snowy, 57 m.p.h. wind gusts. Camden said efforts to remove it would resume Sunday morning.
The first firefighters on the scene pulled the three damaged cars to safety with chains attached to a fire truck. They then cut the victims free as police officers waved back throngs of onlookers.
Five people were treated at nearby Northwestern Memorial Hospital, including a woman in her 50s listed in critical condition. A 45-year-old woman, and three men–ages 39, 36 and 26–were all released.
At Cook County Hospital, two women were being treated. Betty Semplinski, 56, was in critical condition with a broken leg and Michelle Whitaker, 24, was in fair condition, a spokesman said. At Grant Hospital, a 53-year-old man was treated for minor injuries.
The building’s first 40 floors, which contain offices and businesses, were evacuated Saturday. All businesses in the building, including the observatory and the Signature Room restaurant, were closed as well. No windows were broken in the building’s residential apartments, located between the 43rd and 92nd floors, authorities said. No injuries were reported inside the building at 875 N. Michigan Ave.
The scaffold was not in use Saturday, but workers have been caulking and cleaning the skin of the building for about a year, said a spokeswoman for the building. She would not disclose the name of the contractor performing the work or the scaffold company.
City ordinance
A city ordinance requires scaffolds to be locked in position when not in use, but it was not clear if that ordinance had been violated Saturday, said city Building Department spokeswoman Kristen Cabanban.
Building inspectors were checking for damage to windows on floors below the damaged scaffold and were removing any broken glass they found. An investigation of the incident likely would be lengthy, Cabanban said.
Authorities moved to close off an area bounded by Rush Street, Chicago Avenue, Lake Shore Drive and Oak Street. Chicago Transit Authority buses on Michigan Avenue were detoured onto inner Lake Shore Drive between Oak and Chicago, a CTA spokesman said.
On a blustery day that also saw about 52,000 ComEd customers inconvenienced by downed power lines, the empty scaffold swaying in the wind above Michigan Avenue had attracted attention even before the accident.
Walter Burrows, 59, a moving company owner, said he was consulting with a client on the 40th floor of a nearby apartment building when he was distracted by movement on the Hancock.
“We were talking, and this thing started blowing in every way, and in mid-sentence, the thing came down,” Burrows said.
A half-block west on Chestnut Street, Shay Baldwin, 28, his mother, Pamela, and father, Pete, had just left his apartment for lunch at the Drake Hotel when Baldwin’s stunned doorman stopped them.
“I told them I thought the John Hancock was falling apart,” doorman James Beard said.
A block to their east, Baldwin said they could see a dozen people braving falling debris to pull the tattered scaffolding off three crushed cars. He and his mother ran to help. The first car they reached had been flattened to the level of the 6-foot-tall Baldwin’s waist.
He said his mother shouted to other rescuers over the wind that she knew CPR.
“It won’t be of any use,” said a man who bent to check a hand sticking out of one of the cars. The pulse was gone.
Across the street, Cheri Widman, 53, of Downstate Streator had been shopping at Lord & Taylor, 835 N. Michigan Ave., and heard “a large boom” that she guessed was the sound of the scaffolding falling. She said security and staff members in the store asked people to stay away from the windows on the Chestnut Street side.
“When the firemen came, the winds were so strong, their hats were flying off their heads,” Widman said. “There was stuff coming down–glass. It was scary.”
A mass of people running from the scene greeted Bruno Lozano, 19, of Hoffman Estates, as he left the Structure clothing store at 840 N. Michigan Ave.
Shopping bag in hand, he got a brief glimpse of the chaotic street scene before the crowd reached him.
“I was being pushed back into the store,” he said. “Some people were running away from the Hancock Center. There was still part of the scaffolding dangling, and people thought that was going to come down, too.”
Yet even as witnesses fled the area, hundreds more arrived to look, crowding the streets nearby. They talked on cell phones, aimed camcorders and sipped hot drinks as police officers struggled to move them outside the blockaded area.
As flashing lights from fire trucks, ambulances and police cars ringed the intersection of Chestnut and Michigan, all eyes were on the still-flapping scaffold.
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“When that thing falls down, it’s not going to come straight down. It could fly anywhere,” a police officer said. The crowds moved back a half-block.
`Right out of a movie’
Among them was Jason Rotstein, a Gold Coast resident who had been walking south on Michigan Avenue and talking on his cell phone when he saw the mass of people rushing toward him. He got close enough to see three “pancaked” cars, broken windows on the Hancock building, and people looking frightened and bewildered.
“It was like right out of a movie,” he said. “I saw a woman running, and I thought `I’ve got to get inside.'”
He joined a crowd in the Borders Books and Music, 830 N. Michigan Ave., across the street from Water Tower Place.
Up the street at toy store FAO Schwartz, 840 N. Michigan Ave., parents made a break for safety with their children. One of them, a father towing a young girl, saw paramedics loading a victim from one of the cars onto a stretcher.
“Anne, don’t look at this,” he told the girl.