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Building Beam Falls Onto Broadway, Hurting Tour Bus Workers

By  Rachelle Blidner and Aidan Gardiner | October 1, 2014 10:00am 

 A metal pole fell and hit two tour bus workers in Times Square, witnesses said.
A metal pole fell and hit two tour bus workers in Times Square, witnesses said.
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DNAinfo/Rachelle Blinder

TIMES SQUARE — A metal beam fell from a sign above Times Square's M&M store Wednesday and hit two tour bus workers standing on the street below, witnesses said.

The 12-foot pole crashed onto Broadway around 8:44 a.m., knocking the Big Bus Tours supervisors to the ground.

Workers were changing a billboard sign about 150 feet above the famed 1600 Broadway store when the beam fell, an Office of Emergency Management official said. The two men who were hurt went by the names Goose and Lino, co-workers who were with them said.

"First, glass was falling, then the metal fell and I felt the impact," said Cassandra Boyd, one of the Big Bus workers who narrowly avoided the falling debris.

"It hit my two co-workers and they fell to the floor. It hit the ground, bounced over me and hit the other guys," said Mario Diaz, another Big Bus worker who was there.

"It came straight down. The piece was shaking from how hard it fell down. One guy was writhing on the floor. I calmed him down," he added.

The injured men were taken to Bellevue Hospital Center in stable condition, an FDNY spokesman said. They were released later Wednesday, according to the tour company.

Diaz said his co-workers were lucky that the beam bounced off the sidewalk first and did not hit them directly.

"If it hit anyone straight down, it definitely would have killed them," Diaz said.

Big Bus Tours had a company representative with the two employees while they were treated in the hospital, a spokesman said. 

"We wish our employees a speedy recovery," said Eric Latorre, the human resources manager for the tour bus company.

A staffer at Landmark, the company that was replacing the signage, did not have further information about the incident.

The M&M store was briefly closed but eventually reopened to customers who streamed past the metal beam, which had been bent into a horseshoe shape.

A spokeswoman for the candy company said that the incident was unrelated to the store.

"Our thoughts are with the injured individuals," company spokeswoman Felicity Tan said.

The Department of Buildings was investigating the incident, a spokesman for the agency said. It was not yet known why the beam fell.

Calls for comment from the M&M store were not immediately returned.

The 25,000-square-foot store, which has been an international tourist destination since it opened in 2006, sells a wide range of candy and candy-related merchandise.