By PETER N. SPENCER – Staten Island Advance

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — With the city facing growing scrutiny over accidental deaths, Mayor Michael Bloomberg yesterday signed two new pieces of legislation aimed at improving public safety.

One bill would require that only people trained and certified through a city-approved program be allowed to build, modify or work on scaffolds over a certain height. The new regulation modifies a 2005 bill that requires workers using scaffolding in excess of 40 feet high to complete a 32-hour scaffold training program.

The addendum was signed a day after a worker washing a building in Brooklyn plunged to his death from scaffolding — and amid a spate of construction site accidents in the first five months of this year. At the time of his deadly fall Monday, 50-year-old Houssain Mosharrf of Brooklyn was not wearing a safety harness, nor was he being supervised by a licensed rigger — both of which are required by the city.

That followed a crane collapse Friday that killed 30-year-old crane operator Donald Leo, a native of New Dorp, and a worker from the Bronx. Those two deaths brought the number of construction site fatalities in the city this year to at least 16. There were 12 construction site deaths in the city last year.

The mayor also signed a new city Fire Code into law yesterday, completing the first extensive revision of the safety standards in nearly a century. The code, which will go into effect next month, addresses a wide range of new regulations, including guidelines for the storage, disposal and handling of hazardous materials; provisions that would give firefighters easier access to rooftops; a “fire safety manager” to ensure each new construction site complies with the new standards; requirements for automatic sprinklers in more residential structures; hardwired smoke detectors in most residences, and new pipe systems and secondary water supplies to help firefighters put water on taller buildings.

The new code took three years to complete, and was based on the more commonly used International Fire Code.

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