Officials were considering several other theories about the collapse on Wednesday, which killed 5 construction workers and injured 10 others. In one scenario, officials said, one section of the scaffold was overloaded with the weight of bricks and cement that were being used to repair the southern facade of the building, at 215 Park Avenue South.
Buildings Department officials cautioned, however, that their investigation was still preliminary. "We have not determined the cause of the collapse," said Ilyse Fink, a department spokeswoman.
As part of the inquiry, fire officials and Buildings Department investigators have interviewed some of the contractors and are also receiving cooperation from the building's manager, Stephen L. Green, the brother of the Democratic candidate for mayor, Mark Green.
And as much as investigators sought to determine the precise cause of the accident, they were also trying to determine if the contractors at the site had taken a cavalier attitude about the safety of the workers, all of whom were nonunion workers. Many were recently arrived immigrants, and several acknowledged that they were in the country illegally.
"This was a nonunion job using unskilled labor," said Richard Weiss, a spokesman for the Mason Tenders District Council of New York, which represents masonry workers. "More people were hurt at this work site in one day than have died during the entire anthrax scare."
Several agencies were looking into the matter. The State Labor Department said it had received a complaint that one worker was 17 years old. It is illegal for workers on a construction site to be under 18. And the Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, was reviewing the possibility of a criminal investigation, said his spokeswoman, Barbara Thompson.
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