3 dead, 9 injured, some critical after Boise building collapses near airport
BOISE – Three people died and nine were injured Wednesday night when a building under construction near the Boise Airport collapsed, the Boise Fire Department reported.
The Ada County Coroner’s Office is expected to identify the three people who died once their families have been notified. The city says it won’t provide updates on the injured, which includes five people who remain in critical condition.
The structure and a crane collapsed adjacent to the Jackson Jet Center, according to Boise Fire. The hangar construction site is on Boise Airport’s property near Rickenbacker and Luke streets. The hangar was being built for the Jackson Jet Center.
An “incredibly large” number of emergency responders assisted during the incident, including units from all over the Treasure Valley, Boise Fire Division Chief of Operations Aaron Hummel said in a news release Thursday. The Boise Airport wasn’t affected.
“Yesterday’s tragic news of the hangar collapse was absolutely heartbreaking for our airport team and for our community,” Boise Airport Director Rebecca Hupp said in the news release. “Today we are thinking about the families that lost loved ones, our neighbors at Jackson Jet Center and their contractor. Life is precious and every day is a gift.”
Crane company cites ‘structural failure’
Inland Crane, a Boise-based crane servicer, was hired to help construct the hangar beginning Monday, according to a press release from Vice President Jeremy Haener. Four of the company’s cranes were used at the site to start with, and with the work largely completed by Wednesday afternoon, only one crane remained at the time of the accident, the statement said.
“At the time of the accident, the final crane was in service to place an end truss,” Haener wrote. “When the building collapsed due to an unknown structural failure, the crane boom — the hydraulic arm of the equipment — snapped on impact.”
Officials are still investigating the cause of the accident. Haener said neither the crane operator nor any members of the Inland team were injured.
“Based on accounts of Inland Crane operators, construction workers on site and the steel erecting contractor, we believe that no action by Inland Crane operators or the crane itself were cause for the structural failure of the hangar,” Haener said. Haener said the company was “shocked and deeply saddened by the tragic incident.”
General contractor has a history of safety violations
Big D Builders is listed as the hangar project’s general contractor in approved building permits on file with the city. The Meridian firm has been registered as a company in Idaho since at least 1996, filings with the Idaho secretary of state showed.
Since 2010, Big D has had more than a dozen safety violations, most of which were categorized as “serious,” on other projects throughout the Treasure Valley, according to OSHA enforcement records. The two most recent cases, in 2022 and 2023, each related to a lack of proper safety measures in place to protect workers against falls from as high as about 2½ stories.
Both projects — one in Meridian, the other in Nampa — involved insufficient worker-fall protections during “steel erection activity,” the violation records showed.
Each case was resolved. The 2022 violation, investigated after a complaint was filed, led to a negotiated $4,315 settlement. The 2023 case, which resulted from a referral, led to a $21,875 fine. The OSHA record does not indicate whether that was paid or if the company met a deadline for abatement.
Big D faced three prior serious fall-protection violations after an OSHA inspection of a construction project in Boise in 2017, the records showed. The company reached a $1,540 settlement, and the case was closed.
Ferd Smith, a project manager and estimator with Big D since 2015, according to the company website, declined to comment Thursday when reached by the Statesman on his cellphone. Company owner Dennis Durrant was unavailable, he said.
Durrant, who lists himself as owner of Big D since 1991, has maintained a contractor registration in Idaho for the company since 2005, according to records of the Idaho Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing. He has no past disciplinary actions against his registration, which is current and doesn’t expire until September.
Big D also operates in Washington, Arizona, Nevada and Oregon, according to the company’s website. There is no record of any safety violations for the company in those states, OSHA records showed.
Boise’s building division had “no concerns or issues” with the hangar during recent inspections, according to a news release from the fire department.