HANOVER — Safety investigations are ongoing after the Hanover Fire Department rescued a construction worker who fell 20 feet from a ladder at Dartmouth’s Thompson Arena on Tuesday morning.
Occupational Safety and Health Administration and internal safety investigations into the incident are underway, Jana Barnello, a Dartmouth spokeswoman, said in an emailed statement Wednesday.
“Our thoughts are with the individual, and we wish them a speedy recovery,” Barnello wrote.
The male worker, whom Hanover Fire Chief Michael Gilbert declined to identify, citing medical privacy laws, had fallen to the bottom of an elevator shaft but was conscious when firefighters arrived a few minutes after 9:30 a.m.
“I don’t believe (the worker was) harnessed,” Gilbert said. “My assumption is he was just using the ladder and either missed a step or tripped.”
The worker sustained serious but non-life threatening injuries in the fall and was transported to Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center following a rescue operation that took about 30 minutes, Gilbert said.
To extricate the worker from 20 feet below grade, firefighters performed a technical roper rescue, using a rope system with pulleys, a cervical spine board and a stokes basket.
“Any technical rescue is kind of outside normal day-to-day operations,” Gilbert said. “It’s a high-risk, low-frequency event.”
The safety concerns for both patients and firefighters are intensified when firefighters are “dealing with heights, ropes; moving the patient,” Gilbert said.
About a dozen Hanover firefighters responded to the scene. Three firefighter paramedics descended down to the fallen worker and “got him stabilized (and) started IVs” to provide fluid resuscitation as they do with all trauma patients, Gilbert said.
The first responders placed the injured worker in the stokes basket, which was attached to the ropes and kept him horizontal on the way up two stories.
In addition to the Fire Department, two members of the town’s Police Department responded to the incident, Police Lt. Matthew Ufford said.
“I’m not aware of any negligence (in the incident),” Ufford said.
On whether there are any laws regulating when workers should be harnessed on construction sites, Ufford said that “that’s outside the purview” of the Hanover Police Department.
A message left at the OSHA office in Concord was not immediately returned on Wednesday.
Renovations to modernize locker rooms and team spaces at Dartmouth’s Thompson Arena were announced last summer. The project includes three phases of construction — including the addition of roughly 11,000 square feet on the eastern side of the arena and 12,100 square feet of interior upgrades — slated for completion “late summer/early fall 2026,” according to a June 2025 Dartmouth College Athletics news release.
The South Burlington, Vt.-based construction company PC Construction is leading the project, which as of last July was estimated to cost more than $20 million.
Phone and email efforts to reach PC Construction were not immediately successful on Wednesday.