Worker’s Pelvis Crushed in Subway Tunnel Accident

In another construction accident marring the MTA’s subway project, a several-hundred-pound slab of semi-hardened concrete broke free from a tunnel wall Thursday morning and struck a worker, crushing his hip and pelvis.

Julio Velarde, 33, was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center where he was listed in good condition, said Dr. M. Michael Shabot, an admitting trauma surgeon.

Velarde told doctors that he and a co-worker were digging about 1:30 a.m. when they noticed slippage above them in a type of concrete used to stabilize tunnel walls. As the workers began to run, a chunk 4 feet by 4 feet fell, pinning Velarde’s leg to the ground.

The accident took place in the Red Line tunnel under the Santa Monica Mountains, about half a mile northwest of the La Brea Avenue access shaft, which sits between Hollywood Boulevard and Franklin Avenue.

Velarde was carried to the shaft on a stretcher and hoisted 100 feet up in a steel cage, said MTA spokesman Ed Scannell.

Doctors at Cedars-Sinai determined that Velarde had not sustained any injuries to internal organs, Shabot said. “His orthopedic injuries are severe,” the doctor said. “But had the boulder fallen on another part of his body--his head, chest or abdomen--it could have been much worse.”

The accident marks the latest in a series of mishaps to plague the Metropolitan Transportation Authority project. On Feb. 16, a worker was killed by a half-ton refuse bin that broke free of its mooring and struck him in the head. The California Division of Occupational Safety and Hazard determined that a contractor had used a substandard steel chain to lift the bin.

On April 22, a section of steel reinforcement bars collapsed, crushing a worker’s chest, stomach and back. He survived the accident.

According to occupational injury reports filed by contractors with the MTA, the rate of injuries at the Santa Monica Mountains tunnel last year was at least 60% higher than the national average for similar work, the Times reported in February.