By Thomas Tracy
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — A dumbwaiter at a Midtown private social club fell three stories, crashing down onto a 32-year-old repairman inside the shaft, FDNY officials said Wednesday.
Firefighters had to bash holes into the walls of The Brook, on E. 54th St. near Park Ave., to pull out the trapped worker for Century Elevator around 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday.
The worker was rushed to NYU Langone Medical Center with “crushing injuries,” FDNY officials said.
The repairman was listed in serious but stable condition at the hospital, officials said.
“He was working on the dumbwaiter when it gave way,” Division Chief Mark Bonilla, head of EMS special operations units, told reporters following the rescue. “We began treating him for multiple injuries, but he was conscious and alert the entire time.
“He was just screaming in pain, and we treated him accordingly,” he said.
When first responders were called to the scene, they found the fallen dumbwaiter on top of the worker. At first, firefighters tried to lift the dumbwaiter, but it began to shake, so they decided to break down the walls and pull the worker out.
“In the end we were able to extricate the person out of the shaft,” FDNY Deputy Chief Nicholas Corrado said. “We had units breaching walls to get access to the patient. And it was a great operation between our ladder company, our engine companies, our rescue company and our EMS personnel, as well.”
The worker is expected to survive, officials said.
The elevator division of the city Buildings Department later learned that the repairman was in the pit of the dumbwaiter shaft, working on the hoist cables, when the dumbwaiter cab plummeted on top of him.
The Buildings Department gave the elevator company a summons for failing to safeguard the dumbwaiter and issued a cease use order, preventing the club from using it until it was fully repaired and reinspected, an agency spokesman said.
The Brook was established in 1903, and its headquarters on E. 54th St. was built in 1925. The private, invite-only club is rumored to have gotten its name from an Alfred Tennyson poem of the same name meaning that the club is open all hours and the conversation flows forever, the City Journal reported in 1992.
A manager at the social club declined to comment on the incident when reached Wednesday.
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