A few weeks ago, there was a horrific Florida construction accident that claimed the lives of two workers and injured several others. While laying concrete on the third floor of a new condominium complex, the roof collapsed. News reports of the accident were anguishing – many workers barely jumped to their safety, with others trapped by debris and hardening concrete, coworkers scrabbling frantically to save them. One man was trapped in concrete to his waist but managed to extricate himself before it hardened.
The following is an excerpt from a Florida Sun-Sentinel story after the accident:
“After the awful screeching of the collapsing luxury townhouse building, the first sounds Arturo Ruiz Gil heard were his co-workers’ cries for help.
The 20-year-old construction worker had just fallen 30 feet from the top of the building onto a wet concrete surface. Pushing aside the rubble, he managed to crawl out with his brother, Andres Ruiz Gil, and uncle, Valentin Ruiz, before the concrete hardened.
“We kneeled down, all three of us, and prayed to God and to the Virgin of Guadalupe to help us and help the ones who were trapped,” Andres Ruiz Gil, 19, said.
Two workers were killed and five were injured late Thursday afternoon when the third floor of the building under construction collapsed west of Hobe Sound. Another six construction workers at the Tranquility complex escaped injury, including a 13-year-old West Palm Beach boy.”
In the aftermath of the accident, the owner of Mac’s Construction and Concrete, the subcontracting company where the workers were employed, expressed regret calling the accident a “freak accident.”
Almost immediately, some unusual things were apparent. One of the workers who narrowly escaped injury was a 13 year-old boy, a potential violation of child labor laws. The subcontractor had a history of OSHA citations and fines. And more recently, it was learned that the subcontractor did not have workers compensation coverage for his employees as is mandated by law.
The state of Florida has recently been cracking down on just such employer fraud, and they stepped in slapping a stop work order on the construction subcontractor. (This linked story in Insurance Journal also has an interesting discussion from readers.) Under the law, the offending employer could be liable for fines of 1.5 times the amount of the coverage avoided a day in damages. Other fines and charges could be brought depending on the accident investigation. For example, most states are extremely strict in enforcing child labor laws.
This is a sad and terrible story for so many reasons. Rarely are fatal work accidents freak events – most could be prevented with adherence to safety rules and OSHA standards. It also echoes a shameful story we’ve addressed here before – the heightened vulnerability of Mexican workers whose on-the-job death rate is two to four times higher than other workers.
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Posts Tagged ‘on-the-job deaths’
Florida shuts down uninsured employer after two worker deaths
Thursday, August 5th, 2004Workplace “freak accidents” as a media myth
Monday, May 10th, 2004In a recent post, Jordan Barab at Confined Space takes issue with the way the media often portrays work fatalities as “freak events.” Jordan says that as far as he’s concerned, a freak accident is “when you’re sitting at your desk, minding your own business and a runaway satellite crashes through the roof over your head.”
He was reacting to the reportage on a recent on-the-job death of a steelworker who was killed after being struck in the head by material suspended from a crane. Those of us who make safety our business know that, sadly enough, there is nothing unusual about such a death. One of the reasons we so often use the term “injury” on Workers Comp Insider rather than “accident” or “incident” is to emphasize that these are human events that take a toll on flesh and blood people like you and me.
His point was that portraying work deaths as “freak,” “acts of God,” “bad luck,” or any other events triggered by the fickle finger of fate absolves everyone from responsibility. Far more often than not, work deaths are predictable and preventable. In another post on the language used to report work deaths, he states:
Don’t let the media or employers ever get away with dismissing a preventable workplace tragedy as “freak.” Don’t let them leave the impression that there was nothing that could have been done, or the worker’s luck had just run out. What to do? Reporters need to be educated about how such tragedies can be prevented. And employers need to be challenged when they assert that no one could have forseen what happened. That’s almost never the case and it certainly wasn’t the case in the incident mentioned above. Don’t let them get away with it.
