Scaffold Accident : 2 Workers Hurt in Fall Credit Luck

Two construction workers said Thursday that they are lucky to be alive after falling three stories to the ground amid a tangled mass of steel scaffolding on which they had been working in Garden Grove.

“I was up high and felt what seemed like an earthquake,” said Mariano Torres Alvarado, 17, of Santa Ana from his hospital bed at UCI Medical Center. “Suddenly it (the scaffolding) began to shake and it came out from under me. I screamed because I thought it was an earthquake, and then the scaffolding fell.”

Alvarado and Rudolpho Aguilar, 20, of Paramount suffered cuts and bruises but were otherwise in good condition after the harrowing fall Wednesday.

The accident occurred as work crews were adding stucco to a wall of the nearly completed Ramada Hotel in the 10000 block of Garden Grove Boulevard. The scaffolding toppled onto the lot of the adjacent County Wide Chrysler-Jeep-Eagle dealership, causing an estimated $1 million in damage to 30 to 40 new Jeep Cherokees, dealership executives said.

But the first concern was for Alvarado and Aguilar. Other workers moved quickly to dig them out from beneath the rubble.

“We fell quickly, then all of the workers came over to rescue us,” Alvarado said. “We were under the metal, and they pulled everything from off of us.”

Aguilar said he only remembers being “up very high” and suddenly feeling the scaffolding give beneath him.

“We were up so high that when it happened I wanted to run,” he said. “I fell on my back on the cement. My whole back hurts, but we are lucky to be alive.”

Authorities still have not determined what caused the 450-foot-long skeleton of steel to collapse. Investigators for Cal/OSHA were scheduled to arrive soon to begin sorting though the wreckage for clues.

Richard Lippi, sales manager at the Chrysler-Jeep-Eagle dealership, said the cars are a total loss and will be sold to an insurance company for salvage.