Two construction workers are dead after plunging seven storeys at a condo site near High Park on Friday.

Emergency crews responded to reports of an industrial accident at 1830 Bloor St. W. at around 11:20 a.m. One man died at the scene and a second man in his 30s was rushed with no vital signs to St. Michael’s Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Neither man’s identity was immediately released.

“It’s a massive wreckage on the ground,” Toronto police Staff Sgt. Ray Meech said of the site, a Daniels Corp. development where a stationary, elevated scaffolding structure broke in half, sending the two bricklayers tumbling.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Jarrett Wadham, a worker at the site, who has been in construction for 15 years. “I heard a bang. I came out and saw everybody lying on the rubble.”

Wadham said both victims were family men, and that he was talking to one of them just moments before the accident.

“It’s like a family. We work together every single day.”

Many of the workers stood huddled together on site Friday afternoon, comforting each other.

“Our heartfelt and deepest sympathies go out to the families and loved ones of the workers who have suffered fatal injuries,” Mitchell Cohen, president of The Daniels Corp., told reporters.

Cohen said safety is of the “utmost importance” to the company, but didn’t say whether people working at the job being carried out in this case would have been required to wear safety harnesses. That information, he said, would come out in the investigation being conducted by the Ministry of Labour.

“We are co-operating with all regulatory and medical officials who are investigating this incident.”

Daniels’ vice-president Sam Tassone said there are different safety protocols depending on the activity. “I can’t tell you that what they were doing required or didn’t require (safety harnesses),” he said.

A joint statement by Minister of Labour Kevin Flynn and Chief Prevention Officer George Gritziotis said “tragedies like this are particularly disconcerting” in light of the government’s commitment to workplace safety.

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“Ministry of Labour inspectors are currently investigating this incident, with the goal of learning how this happened and how similar tragedies can be prevented in the future.”

The victims were employed by Venice Masonry Contractors Ltd. When reached by phone, the company declined to make a comment.

In 2009, four construction workers repairing balconies on a Kipling Ave. building with a different company died after falling 13 storeys when the swing stage they were working on snapped in the middle. Metron Construction pleaded guilty to criminal negligence causing death and was ordered to pay a $750,000 fine, the highest in Canadian history for criminal corporate liability.