A worker was killed Friday after a balcony collapsed at the Spinnaker Condominium Complex in Sea Isle City, New Jersey.
On Saturday, investigators identified the victim as Jose Pereira, 43, of Philadelphia. Officials said he was pronounced dead just before 10 p.m. on Friday at the scene by a Cape May County Forensic Nurse.
Investigators said that Pereira was a construction employee working for a private contractor on the building’s exterior.
According to law enforcement officials, Pereira died after being trapped under a 30-foot slab of concrete.
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Pereira was one of three workers involved in the incident. Police said that two workers -- who suffered minor injuries -- were on the eighth floor balcony at the Spinnaker Condominiums on 3600 Boardwalk around 2:30 p.m. while Pereira was on the seventh floor balcony below.
Officials said the eighth floor balcony then collapsed onto the seventh floor balcony, trapping Pereira on the lower floor underneath thousands of pounds of rubble.
Joye Fiocchi, a Sea Isle City resident, told NBC10 she heard the collapse.
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“I was in the kitchen. I’m getting a cup of coffee and I hear this horrible crash," she said. "Loud crash. And I ran to my back balcony and looked over and I just heard this blood-curdling scream.”
Firefighters from multiple departments, police and multiple Search & Rescue teams all responded to the scene and tried to get Pereira out.
Captain Matt Johnson of the Cape May County Urban Search & Rescue Team spoke with NBC10 about the challenges the rescuers were facing.
“Stabilizing the slabs below to prevent any further collapse," he said. "Again, we don’t know what caused this collapse to happen so we need to think worst-case scenario, prevent those other floors from collapsing. We’re guessing each floor weighs around 11,000 pounds. So it’s quite a bit of work to stabilize that before we could send our first responders in to conduct a rescue.”
First responders attempted to reach Pereira Friday night but they observed significant cracks in the surrounding area and a slope to the balcony. They then determined that the side of the building was unsafe.
At that point, police said, all residents in the building were evacuated.
The rescue operation then turned into a recovery effort.
“He was crushed underneath the collapse," Sea Isle City Police Lieutenant Jim McQuillen said. "We’ve switched now from a rescue effort to a recovery at this point.”
Police said that they attempted a coordinated recovery plan to breach the outside wall of the building near Pereira's location by cutting through approximately 12-inches of reinforced concrete -- after the seventh floor balcony was temporarily stabilized from underneath.
Once an opening was created in the wall, the concrete slab was lifted by heavy lift air bags and Pereira's body was recovered.
Officials said that all of the decks on the exterior of the Spinnaker’s South Tower, near where the incident occurred, are currently being stabilized. Once the building is considered safe, further evaluations on both Spinnaker buildings will be conducted by private engineers.
