Feds Never Told City About 'Impalement Hazards' at Unsafe Yeshiva Site

By Gwynne Hogan
DNA Info
June 28, 2016

https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20160628/williamsburg/osha-didnt-warn-city-about-impalment-hazards-at-unsafe-yeshiva-site

Inspectors visited the school at 638 Bedford and issued 21 serious violations.

WILLIAMSBURG — Federal safety inspectors who found a yeshiva construction site riddled with perilous worker safety conditions including "impalement hazards" in early June, failed to notify city agencies about the risk, allowing construction to continue at the site for weeks despite the dangerous conditions.

The Department of Buildings, which is the agency that actually has the authority to shut down unsafe construction sites, only learned about the hazardous conditions at 638 Bedford Ave., an under-construction yeshiva after DNAinfo New York called to ask about the violations.

Federal safety inspectors from the U.S. Labor Department's Occupational Safety & Health Administration had randomly inspected the school in Williamsburg on June 3. They found 21 serious worker safety violations including no fall protection around elevator shafts, skylights and other open holes, and a slew of "impalement hazards" due to unguarded rebar jutting up from the structure, they said. 

Yeshiva Kehilath Yakov, the company that owns the site and runs several schools in Williamsburg and Borough Park, was notified of the violations June 19 and several days later OSHA issued a press release about the inspection.

Last week DNAinfo contacted the Buildings Department to ask about the site and they immediately sent inspectors there, slapping it with a stop work order, said Alex Schnell, a spokesman for the department said.

Inspectors found inadequate guards and rails, no plans for the scaffolding, inadequate debris netting, and work without a permit, among two dozen other violations, according to the Department of Buildings. Part of lifting the stop-work order will require contractors to hire a full-time site supervisor, Schnell said.

They also sent inspectors to two other sites run by the same company, Schnell said.

Worker safety advocate Charlene Obernauer, director of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, called the lack of communication from OSHA "really disconcerting." 

"It sounds like an investigation is in order," she said. Once OSHA determines there are significant safety hazards they should communicate with the city, she said "so that a stop work order could be issued. That's sort of common sense."

Ted Fitzgerald, a spokesman for OSHA, who had earlier told DNAinfo they only see violations as severe as at 638 Bedford about a dozen times a year across the whole city, said it's not OSHA's job to bring the city up to speed.

"OSHA is the agency which has the primary responsibility for inspecting for worker safety and does not typically share information about programmed inspections with third parties," he said. "Which is not to say that OSHA wouldn’t share information with other agencies such as DOB if OSHA identified a situation coming under another agency’s purview."

He would not say why the agency hadn't informed the Department of Buildings in this case.

Obernauer said that while agency communication is common sense, it's not required.

Several years back a city councilman introduced legislation that would have required the Department of Buildings to report to OSHA (the city couldn't require a federal agency to report to it but they can legislate the other way around), but so far that legislation hasn't been enacted, she said.

"Communication between agencies is critical to making safe and healthy workplaces," she said.

Permits issued to Yeshiva Kehilath Yakov list David Oberlander and Joseph Gold as two managers of the business, neither of whom responded to requests for comment.