Suffolk worker seriously injured in scaffolding collapse at impound lot

A 57-year-old Suffolk County Department of Public Works employee was seriously injured after scaffolding collapsed at the Suffolk County Police Department Impound at 100 Old Country Road in Westhampton, dropping him about 20 feet to the ground and sending him to Stony Brook University Hospital.

Police said the fall happened around 10:30 a.m. and that Suffolk County Police Seventh Squad detectives were investigating. Suffolk police also said OSHA was notified, a step that puts workplace safety practices under immediate scrutiny at a county job site.

The county’s Department of Public Works says it is responsible for constructing, maintaining and operating county properties and infrastructure, including buildings and roads. That makes the impound lot injury more than a routine accident report. It involved a county worker on county property, at a site tied directly to the police department’s operations.

The collapse also fits into a broader safety picture that OSHA has been warning about for years. The agency says falls are the leading cause of death in construction. In 2023, OSHA reported 421 fatal falls to a lower level out of 1,075 construction fatalities. Its scaffolding guidance also cites Bureau of Labor Statistics data showing 52 fatal falls to lower levels from scaffolding in 2020.

For Suffolk County, that context matters because the injury happened on public property with a county employee working above ground level. The key questions now are straightforward: what work was underway at the impound lot, how the scaffold failed and whether the safety checks expected on a county job site were in place.

The incident places the county’s own workplace standards at the center of the response. With a worker hospitalized and investigators on scene, the case now turns on whether this was an isolated equipment failure or a sign of deeper oversight problems on public jobs throughout Suffolk.