Feb. 29, 2008 - NIAGARA FALLS ... The general contractor of a hotel construction site on Niagara Falls Boulevard, where a man fell to his death in October, now faces fines for safety violations totaling more than $128,000.

An additional $86,000 was imposed Friday by the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

The company, Georgia-based DEC Management, was fined $40,000 in November for numerous fall hazards.

The contractor's list of fines began even before the fatal fall. In August, the company was fined $2,100 for failing to have a fall protection program and not providing fall protection training to employees.

DEC Management was slapped with the new fines for failing to correct the hazards cited during the earlier OSHA inspection, and also for new fall hazards.

Construction superintendent August Corviso, 53, of Garner, N.C., near Raleigh, was killed and Thomas Szcerbacki, 54, of Niagara Falls, broke his legs after the men fell 25 feet from the third-floor roof of the hotel.

Work on the $6 million Holiday Inn Express at 101st Street was immediately halted after the incident by the Niagara Falls Department of Building Inspections.

Construction resumed two weeks later, only to be shut down in December, pending amended design plans. That stop-work order was lifted in January after the department reviewed the new plans and declared the site safe.

Work continued on the hotel today.

Phone calls to Mike Thomas, president of DEC Management, were not immediately returned.

For more details, see Saturday's Buffalo News.

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