PROVO -- One of the Academy Square chimneys came tumbling down Saturday afternoon from the top of a building that is being remodeled into a library for Provo.

Two construction workers, a father and a son, who had been chipping bricks on a side wall of the Academy Square building were injured by the falling bricks and debris.Adan Alfaro, 41, suffered neck, back and chest injuries, and his son, Jose Alfaro, 21, had a knee injury. Both were transported to Utah Valley Regional Medical Center an hour after the accident.

Provo Fire Department deputy chief Mike Bledsoe said the two men were in the bucket of a lift about 35-40 feet high inside the old structure at approximately 2:50 p.m. when the chimney collapsed, showering them with bricks.

Firefighters called to the scene scurried up a ladder truck to the roof and rappelled down inside to reach the pair. The older man was buried in rubble and his son was moving around inside the bucket, threatening to tip it.

"They are quite fortunate the bucket didn't come down when the debris hit," Bledsoe said. "They are both conscious and breathing although one appears to have back, neck and chest injuries."

Bledsoe said the accident has triggered concern among the workers over the possible collapse of at least three other chimneys on the roof line.

Much of the roof itself has been removed, and one chimney was taken down earlier because it was feared to be unstable, he said.

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Steel girders appear to be all that's holding up the remaining walls of the 107-year-old building. The chimneys are part of the education building, the last of four buildings that once made up what is known as Academy Square on Provo's University Avenue between 500 and 600 North streets.

Crews have been busily laying the foundations and remodeling the old building to create a new $22 million, 90,000-square-foot Provo City Library after voters approved a multimillion-dollar bond that essentially saved the historic area.

Originally the buildings, known as Brigham Young University's "B.Y. Academy," opened for classes in 1892. Many area residents have sentimental ties and fond memories of the buildings, which compelled various groups to organize to restore them.

They were sold in 1975 by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and then changed hands many times over the next 20 years, often threatened with demolition and twice the center of lawsuits filed by those pleading for it to be saved.

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