Man killed in roof collapse

(Update)

It was just another day on the job, for a young father working on a Mississauga construction site when suddenly, something went terribly wrong. Moments later, rescue crews were rushing to the scene, too late to save the young man’s life.

It was just before 11:30 this morning, and conditions on the construction site here at the Sheridan Centre on the Erin Mills Parkway, were relatively good. At the moment, there is no explanation for this tragic accident.

The disaster happened in seconds.

Rob Rowe is a worker at the site: “And all I seen was the top part of the beam. I heard the steel bending and seen the beam line go over and that’s all I seen. I didn’t even see the other side of the part go down.”

The rescue attempt took much longer.

Mike Corcoran is with the Mississauga Fire Department: “The actual scene, it was icy, it was muddy. There was lots of tangled metal around. So it was a dangerous scene to begin with.”

Beneath the twisted tangle of metal, 33-year old Christopher Crawford of Kitchener. He had been working up top. Installing a metal roof deck. On the girders of a partially completed skeleton for a new Target outlet. Moments later, he lay trapped beneath the rubble, out of the reach of rescue workers.

Corcoran said: “We had to make sure the scene was safe, that there was no chance of further collapse on our people. Once that was all secured, we began the slow process of removing the entrapment from the worker.”

Special equipment was brought in. But what began as a difficult rescue turned into a recovery operation.

Crawford was a father of three.

Lights have been brought in to illuminate the scene as the investigation continues. Work was underway at one end of the building while the roof was being installed nearby but workers told us that no machinery had come in contact with the structure leaving no immediate explanation of what caused the structural failure of the beam line, and the collapse of the roof.