Safety on Building Sites.

No doubt Safe-Work NSW will be having a look at the regulations covering work sites after a man was killed and two others seriously injured when a wind storm hit the city this week.  The weather bureau gave advance notice that very strong winds were expected and traditionally August is the windy month of the year.

There were the usual disruptions that can be expected on a windy day.  Tree branches breached power lines in some suburbs and traffic was disrupted when wheelie bins were propelled onto busy roads, but the mayhem proved deadly in Carlingford and Kellyville.

In Carlingford a recently erected brick wall on a duplex building site could not withstand the wind pressure and collapsed, burying two workers.  Colleagues called for assistance and began rescue work and retrieved one man alive.  When the other was recovered the ministrations of paramedics was unsuccessful - and he died at the scene.

On that same day another brick wall at Kellyville suffered a similar fate.  A nineteen year old worker was pulled unconscious from under the debris and treated for head and facial industries.  He is now in a critical condition in hospital.

There are strict building regulations covering work practices on building sites, and one of these requires brick walls to be braced to prevent them toppling under wind pressure.  In the main, this is ignored because of the time and money involved - and the fact that a collapse in windy weather is a very unusual event.  The industry gets away with unbraced brick walls for years on end and it is only in what some consider " freak " conditions that tragedies happen.

The other consideration is the time factor.  It is unusual for a free standing brick wall to be left unsupported for any length of time.  Usually, within hours it becomes part of the house structure and linked to other parts of the building which provide the resistance against wind pressure.  When the roofing is finally put in place the outer brick walls form part of a rigid structure that is proof against all but cyclonic winds.

One of the other problems is the fact that most building sites are unregulated.   The building industry consists of a huge number of small building firms where an entrepreneur who has completed the necessary apprenticeship hires others and goes into business as a " builder ".   It is highly competitive and the margin for profit on each job relies on luck and good fortune with the weather - and keeping unnecessary expenditure to the minimum.  Many such builders hesitate to brace a brick wall because they consider it an avoidable cost.

That is the difference between jobs involving national building firms - and little independent building companies.   In extreme windy conditions those big jobs shut down until the wind subsides and they are carefully watched over by both building unions and the Safe-Work people.  Independent builders are working on constructions and renovation work all over the city and only come to the attention of Safe-Work in response to someone lodging a work complaint.

There is every chance that nothing will change - and sometime in the future tragedy will strike another building site on an unusually windy day !