Construction worker killed in Cebu City condo building crash

Collapsed steel wall (INQUIRER FILE PHOTO/ EDWIN BACASMAS)

CEBU CITY — A 20-year-old worker was killed after a concrete wall and steel piles fell on him while working at a construction site along Salvador Extension in Barangay Labangon, Cebu City, Wednesday morning.

John Eric Llera was welding a large steel beam along the perimeter of an excavation when the wall collapsed and crushed him to death around 10:30 a.m., said PO3 Cristobal Geronimo, investigator of the Cebu City Police Office’s homicide division.

Llera, a native of Barangay Canlumampao, Toledo City, west Cebu,  was rushed by rescuers to the Cebu City Medical Center but he didn’t make it alive, said Nagiel Banacia, head of the Cebu City Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office (CCDRRMO).

Police investigators and city officials were denied entry to the construction site until Vice Mayor Edgardo Labella arrived past 1 p.m.and pleaded to construction site officials through a megaphone outside the entrance gate to allow him and other city officials to enter.

After 10 minutes, Labella, the police investigators and officers of the Office of the Building Official (OBO), were allowed entry by the construction site’s security guard.

The vice mayor halted all operations at the construction site pending an investigation to be conducted by OBO officials, the Department of Labor and Employment, and the police.

J.E. Abraham Lee Construction and Development is undertaking the construction of the Casa Mira Towers owned by AB Soberano International Corp. and Cebu Landmasters Inc.

The commercial and residential condominium project is envisioned to rise in an area of 3,681 square meters and will have two towers.  SFM