Work on Vancouver highrise stops after giant pane of glass falls 36 floors

If you live in a big city amid a forest of skyscrapers you take some things on faith.

One of those things is that nothing bad will fall off one of those towers and kill you.

That faith gets tested occasionally, though, like on Thursday when a 90-kilogram pane of glass fell from a downtown Vancouver condo tower under construction and smashed into a parked car below.

It narrowly missed the driver of the vehicle, a construction worker on the project who was standing about a metre away.

The floor-to-ceiling window measured 1.2 metres by 2.4 metres, Donna Freeman, spokeswoman for WorkSafeBC, told the Vancouver Province.

Onni Group, the developer building of The Mark, said the glass fell from the 36th floor of the 41-storey tower being completed in the Yaletown district.

Freeman said workers were positioning the glass for installation when it fell.

"Something caused it to shift. We're told at this point something happened with the suction cups [holding the glass]," she said. "It shifted and it fell 36 floors,"

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In a statement, Onni spokesman Chris Evans called the accident an "isolated event," the Province said.

"It is an extremely rare occurrence that something like this happens on a construction site and we are taking the matter very seriously," said Evans.

But local residents say they've complained before about stuff falling from the construction project.

Resident Jay Markowski claimed Thursday's accident is part of a string of incidents, including another window frame falling into an alley and a steel stud falling into the courtyard of his building while a resident was cleaning up other construction debris.

"We are afraid," Markowski told the Province. "We don't feel safe outside our front door."

Onni disputed residents' claims.

"Onni has maintained an excellent track record with WorkSafeBC, and just yesterday (Wednesday) WorkSafeBC officers were on site investigating claims by neighbours that other material, like metal studs and garbage, were falling from the site," read the statement.

"However, there was no evidence found to suggest those allegations were true," it continued. "The material in question did not match the material being used on Onni's site."

Nevertheless, the provincial safety watchdog has slapped a partial stop-work order on the project's window installation while it investigates.

"Other work is ongoing, but obviously we are going to have a presence there and make sure this site is safe to continue work on," Freeman told CBC News.

Three years ago in Toronto, a massive slab of concrete six metres by one metre crashed to the ground in front of the entrance of a North Your office tower, causing authorities to deem it unsafe because of unstable exterior panels.

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