Three workers are dead and one is injured after a stairway collapse at the future headquarters of Marathon Oil.
The interior stairwell failed at 1:32 p.m. Monday at the 15-story tower under construction on Town & Country Boulevard, near CityCentre mixed-use development, according to the Houston Fire Department.
The three workers were killed in the collapse; one injured worker was rescued and taken to the hospital in stable condition, HFD confirmed.
At a 5 p.m. news conference, HFD Asst. Chief Ruy Lozano provided details. He said the incident occurred in the scissor stairwell around the building’s 13th/14th floors. The stairwell crumpled, falling “pancake-style,” bringing the stairwells and landings below down with it, trapping the bodies of the three workers in the rubble. The collapsed staircases could be seen lying in heaps from outside the building.
Lozano said firefighters were concerned about potential secondary collapses around the stairwell.
“Currently, there is no body recovery in process,” he said.
Building engineers from the construction company and the city of Houston were evaluating the building and working to make sure it was fully stabilized, he said, explaining that recovering the bodies of the three construction workers killed in the collapse could take “hours to days.”
This article first appeared on the Houston Chronicle – an Energy Voice content partner. For more from the Houston Chronicle click here.