A man was killed by a falling tape measure in Jersey City, officials said Monday. According to Philly.com , the man was working on a construction site when the freak accident occurred. Gary Anderson, 58, was bringing drywall to the site this morning when he was hit with a tape measure that had fallen off the belt of a construction worker who had been on top of the high rise. The 1-pound tape measure fell 50 stories, striking the man on the ground.
“[The tape measure] hit another piece of metal construction equipment 15 feet off the ground, then ricocheted and hit this man in the head,” said Jersey City’s public safety spokeswoman Carly Baldwin. Mr. Anderson was not wearing a hard hat at the time of the incident. Generally, all construction sites of this nature are gated off with signs that read “hard hat area.” It’s unknown if that was the case on this site.
The man killed by the falling tape measure was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he went into cardiac arrest. He died shortly thereafter. According to ABC 6 , Anderson stopped at another man’s truck to chat when the incident occurred. It sounds like he really was in the wrong place at the wrong time. As with many accidents of this nature, there are a lot of questions being asked… and a lot of “what ifs?”
“A police report listed Anderson as working for Charlotte, North Carolina-based National Gypsum. A spokeswoman for the company said he was delivering National Gypsum’s product at the time of the accident but was employed by an independent trucking company.”
Freak accidents happen quite a bit and are completely unpredictable. As previously reported by the Inquisitr , a Chicago woman was killed in September when a gargoyle fell from the roof of a church and hit her in the head. A “sudden gust of wind” was blamed for the dislodging of the gargoyle.
As for the man killed by the falling tape measure, OSHA is currently investigating. While you might think that something so small as a tape measure couldn’t possibly cause such a reaction, you’d be wrong. According to How Stuff Works , small items that fall from high areas (like buildings) can be extremely dangerous.
“The grain of truth embedded in this urban legend is the fact that falling objects — even ones that seem harmless — can do a lot of damage. That’s why people on construction sites wear hard hats.”
Mr. Anderson’s hard hat was in his truck.