The bodies of two workers killed in last week’s parking garage collapse in Grays Ferry have been found, city officials announced Monday.
Mayor Cherelle Parker said the two men, who were members of the city’s ironworkers union, were removed in the pre-dawn hours of Monday morning.
“They have recovered both individuals with the utmost dignity and compassion and respect for their families and loved ones,” Parker said.
Iron Workers Union Local 401 identified the two missing workers as Matthew Kane and Mark Scott Jr. A third worker, Stepan Shevchuk, was rescued from the debris shortly after the collapse and died at an area hospital.
The demolition work was completed at about 7 p.m. Sunday, and urban search and rescue crews from the fire department, who are especially trained for this type of search, used cadaver dogs to perform the somber job of locating the bodies.
Fire Commissioner Jeffrey Thompson said they knew approximately where the bodies were buried, in the collapsed stairwell.
“Once we got down to where we had a pretty good idea where the people were, and that was the stairwell. That was a unique architectural feature,” he said. “Once we got to the stairwell, we literally had our tech rescue folks get in there and use tools of various types to locate the people. We had to de-layer. We had to take it apart piece by piece.”
Thompson said crews had to use “shovels, buckets and our hands to get to the people.”
