A construction worker died Thursday after falling at a site in Manhattan related to the Gateway tunnel project, according to a statement from three organizations involved in the $16 billion effort to build new rail tracks under the Hudson River between New York City and New Jersey.
The worker fell about 60 feet, Anthony Romano, a battalion chief at the New York Fire Department, said at a news conference on Thursday morning. The authorities did not immediately release his name; the union he belonged to later identified him as Jorge Sanchez, 52.
Chief Romano said the man had been working on a recently poured foundation wall when he fell into a pit below just before 9 a.m. “We do not know how or why,” Chief Romano said.
Jorge Sanchez, 52, the man killed at the construction site, in a photograph shared with The New York Times by his friend and colleague Nery Rodas.Credit…Nery Rodas
About 60 fire and emergency medical personnel were called to the scene after the fall, according to the Fire Department. They found that Mr. Sanchez was not breathing and had no pulse. He was lifted from the pit on a stretcher and taken to a hospital.
Work has been suspended at the site pending an investigation, according to the statement from the three organizations, the Gateway Development Corporation, Amtrak and Related Companies.
The worker had been involved in constructing a right of way that would connect the new rail tunnels to Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan, according to the statement.
He had been a member of the New York City District Council of Carpenters, according to a statement from the union. “There are no words strong enough to express the pain and sadness we all feel,” Paul Capurso, a leader at the union, said in the statement. “He was more than a carpenter. He was part of our family, a brother who stood shoulder to shoulder with us every day to build something bigger than ourselves.”
Nery Rodas, 50, another worker at the construction site in Hudson Yards, was off work when he got a call informing him that Mr. Sanchez, his best friend and colleague of two decades, had been in an accident.
Mr. Rodas rushed to the scene and then to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, where he found Mr. Sanchez’s wife and four children, praying. Soon after, they learned Mr. Sanchez had died.
Mr. Sanchez was a hardworking family man who immigrated from Honduras in the 1990s, Mr. Rodas said. The two men, both carpenters, met in 1999 in New York while working on the same project. Since then, when one of them found a new gig, he would put in a good word for the other. Mr. Rodas said he had helped Mr. Sanchez get the job at Hudson Yards.
Mr. Sanchez had just three years to go before reaching the age at which he could retire and receive a full pension, Mr. Rodas said.
“We were always talking about, When are we going to retire?” he said. “We put our lives at risk for our families. We were almost done.”
The Gateway tunnel project has been a target of the Trump administration, which at the start of October said it would withhold billions of dollars in funding that had already been approved while it reviewed the diversity, equity and inclusion requirements in the project’s contracts.
Two weeks later, President Trump said he had “terminated” Gateway and boasted that he had taken advantage of the current government shutdown to kill projects championed by Democratic leaders.
Still, it was not immediately clear that the Gateway project had been stripped of the federal funding it relies on, and work at the site has continued.
On Thursday afternoon, workers remained at the site after the fall, some looking out from a roadway overpass while attempting to process the news of their colleague’s death.
Alan Morales, 49, a plumber working on a different project nearby, said he had witnessed the aftermath of the man’s fall. “Everybody stopped working,” Mr. Morales said. “A bunch of guys were trying to help him out, but he wasn’t moving at all.”
The mishap was a reminder for Mr. Morales of the dangers of such work, he said. One misstep, he said, can cost you your life.
“You never know if you’re coming home or not,” he said.
Patrick McGeehan contributed reporting.
