Building under construction collapses in Maple Grove

A faulty concrete support system may be to blame for a construction collapse in Maple Grove that injured as many as nine people Friday morning. One of them was trapped under the rubble for about 45 minutes.

Rescuer Cory Kissling said the worker was trapped for about 45 minutes as emergency medical personnel and uninjured construction workers tried to free him from a space less than 3 feet high with "hundreds of thousands of pounds of concrete overhead of us."

Kissling, a supervisor for the North Memorial hospital ambulance service, said rescuers tried to keep the trapped worker calm and used a tourniquet to control his bleeding.

"He was conscious and talking the whole time," Kissling said.

The injured were taken to North Memorial Hospital, and ahospital spokeswoman says that four people are listed in serious condition. She says five others are in good condition and were expected to be discharged Friday.

The construction site is the future headquarters of Great River Energy, a nonprofit cooperative electric wholesale supplier.

Brad Wood is an executive vice president with McGough Construction, which is building the 166,000-square foot building. He says workers were at finishing up pouring a concrete slab onto a deck for the third floor of the building. That deck was supported by a temporary erection called a form system.

"Two of the sections of the form system collapsed. It represented about a 50-foot by 60- foot area," says Wood. "There was some kind of a failure in the form system. We are obviously investigating what that was."

Wood says he doesn't know if the form system was used on other construction sites. He says the company immediately shut down the construction site when the accident was reported.

(The Associated Press contributed to this report)

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