Floor collapse at casino site in Cincinnati hurts a dozen

Cincinnati— A floor collapsed into a V shape Friday at the construction site of a new casino, sending workers sliding to the ground and leaving at least a dozen with broken bones, bumps or bruises.

Authorities said there were no life-threatening injuries in the collapse at the Horseshoe Casino Cincinnati site, which came just weeks after a similar accident at a Cleveland casino with the same developer.

The casinos are being developed by Detroit businessman Dan Gilbert's Rock Gaming LLC in partnership with Caesar's Entertainment. Gilbert is founder of Quicken Loans Inc. and owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers professional basketball team.

The collapse in Cincinnati occurred shortly before 8 a.m. as a crew was pouring a section of concrete floor, Steve Rosenthal, of casino co-developer Rock Gaming, said Friday.

Rosenthal told reporters at a news conference that it was too soon to determine what caused the collapse.

Fire Chief Richard Braun, who was one of the first on the scene after the collapse, said that a beam supporting the floor "sheared away" and the floor came down while the workers were on top of it.

"They basically rode the V down," Braun said. No one was underneath the 60-foot-by-60-foot section of floor.

The injured were sent to hospitals with what appeared to be mostly bruises and bumps, and possibly some broken bones, the fire chief said. All workers were accounted for, Rosenthal said.

By dinnertime Friday, all but three of the workers had been treated and released, said JoAnn Davidson, who chairs the Ohio Casino Control Commission. She said she knew of one worker having a broken elbow and another, a broken hip.

Jessie Folmar, a spokeswoman for Cincinnati-based Messer Construction Co., said the company was trying to learn what happened.

"Our top priority is to ensure everyone at our jobsites can return home safely to their families at the end of each day," Messer's president and chief executive Tom Keckeis said in a statement. Messer has a clean safety record with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration since 2006, according to information from the agency's database. Its last Ohio incident was that year, when it was penalized for four serious violations and paid a penalty of $3,125. One involved a lack of adequate fall protection for workers.

OSHA inspectors, as well as investigators from the state, were looking into the accident. The developers said work won't resume until the construction team and authorities say it is safe.

The collapse occurred on what will be the casino's second floor, said Jason Mullins, business manager for a union representing ironworkers on the project, but not the workers who were hurt. The framework was more than one-third complete, Mullins said.

Mullins said some of the union's workers were at the site and saw at least part of the collapse.

"They were shaken up, but they were not injured and they worked to help those who were," he said. "No one was underneath the floor, or there could have been lives lost."

The casino is being developed by Rock Gaming in partnership with Caesar's Entertainment. The same team is behind a casino project in downtown Cleveland where a garage partially collapsed on Dec. 16. A 60-foot-by-60-foot second-level section of the parking deck gave way while concrete was being poured. No one was injured.

There is "absolutely zero connection" between the collapse in Cincinnati and the accident in Cleveland, Rosenthal said. "These are two different construction management companies, two different contractors, two different sites, two different areas."

Rock Gaming spokeswoman Jennifer Kulczycki said the concrete work being done Friday was "a regularly scheduled pour."

Horseshoe Casino Cincinnati is a $400 million development under construction in the northeast corner of the city's center and is expected to open in spring 2013, an official with the company told an Ohio House panel.

The casino is expected to attract 6 million visitors a year and create 1,700 jobs, said Lee Dillard, vice president of finance for the Horseshoe Casino Cleveland.

Associated Press reporters Doug Whiteman, Julie Carr Smyth, Ann Sanner and John Seewer and The Detroit News contributed.