The incident, which LRT contractor Rideau Transit Group characterized as minor, happened about 100 metres from the tunnel portal near Laurier Avenue and Waller Street at around 4:30 p.m.
Paramedics took one worker to hospital with a hand injury. The other two workers didn’t require treatment.
Peter Lauch, technical director for RTG, said the workers were on a lift spraying concrete onto a wall when some reinforcing steel became intertwined with the lift’s basket. The workers became stuck in the air.
“Some of the reinforcing steel started to buckle,” Lauch said. “It trapped the workers in the lift.”
Nothing fell from the top of the cavern onto the workers.
“They were nowhere close to the ceiling. They were strictly up along the wall,” Lauch said.
It appears the steel caused the injury to the worker, Lauch said. Another worker might have sprained his ankle walking out of the tunnel, he added.
He said that the tunnel did not collapse in any way, and that the workers were using safe operating procedures.
“You don’t want it to happen, but it’s not unusual,” Lauch said.
The concrete spraying, which is called shotcrete, is being done along the entire 2.5-kilometre tunnel.
The labour investigation halted all work in the immediate area, but tunnelling continued as far down as Rideau station. Work at the uOttawa station also won’t be impacted, Lauch said.
Mayor Jim Watson arrived at the tunnel portal after firefighters and paramedics removed the construction workers. He said he spoke with the two workers who didn’t need hospital treatment and wished them well.
“It was not a tunnel collapse at all,” Watson said.
See video of Mayor Jim Watson addressing media on scene:
Paramedics, firefighters and police hurried to the tunnel portal after initial reports that workers were trapped. Rescuers wearing helmets entered the tunnel and brought the construction workers out. Everything was calm on the surface.
The sight of emergency lights brought back memories for university students watching the operation.
On Feb. 21, 2014, LRT tunnelling led to a sinkhole on Waller Street at Laurier Avenue. It was caused by an undetected pit of backfill.
On June 8, 2016, a sinkhole on Rideau Street captured international attention. The LRT tunnel was being excavated under Rideau Street, but the city hasn’t released the cause of the sinkhole. A report is expected by the end of 2016.
No one was hurt in the road collapse.
Watson has confidence in the tunnel work for the $2.1-billion Confederation Line LRT.
“Anyone who has been involved in any tunnelling realizes there’s always a risk of challenges in the tunnel,” Watson said.
“We have some of the best tunnel engineering working on this project and safety is our first and foremost concern for the employees.”
Sean McKenny, president of the Ottawa & District Labour Council, said he’s worried about the safety of LRT workers.
“It’s something to take seriously,” McKenny said. “It’s a big project, and there has to be effort by the contractors to ensure the protection of workers, and a number of us are getting increasingly concerned in respect to the timing and trying to ensure the project is on schedule. Ultimately that affects safety as well.”
Luigi Carrozzi, business manager of Labourers’ International Union of North America Local 527, said a union representative was at the site Thursday speaking to workers. He could not yet confirm whether the trapped workers were LiUNA members, and said it was still too early to provide a full comment on the incident.
“Obviously the safety of our workers is always a concern, even if there was no incident,” Carrozzi said. “It’s definitely one of the concerns when you’re tunnelling, cave-ins occasionally do happen, so we need to speak to members to find out exactly what happened.”
Laurier Avenue was closed in the area at the peak of the afternoon commute and reopened just before 6:30 p.m.
— with files from Aedan Helmer, Susana Mas and Joe Lofaro
]]>