A California construction company is facing proposed penalties totaling $371,100 following the death of one of its workers in a trench collapse. The fatal collapse occurred less than three weeks after the company had been cited for trenching violations on another job.
Javier Romero, 24, of Alameda County was working in an 8-foot-deep trench in San Francisco on September 28 hand digging on a job to replace sewer parts, according to Cal/OSHA. An un-shored section of the trench underneath a sidewalk collapsed, burying Romero under sandy, granular dirt and concrete debris.
There was shoring and sheeting on two sides of the trench, but Cal/OSHA said it was inadequate and improperly installed. The other two sides, including the one that collapsed, had no cave-in protection.
The San Francisco Fire Department responded with more than 50 firefighters. Dogs were used to locate the area where Romero was buried, and firefighters systematically worked to recover the body through an opening in the sidewalk. Romero’s body was recovered about 2 hours later.
His employer, D’Arcy & Harty Construction Inc. of San Francisco, was cited for two willful violations for failure to provide adequate cave-in protection and not providing a safe way to escape the trench. Willful violations are ones in which the employer knowingly failed to comply with regulations or acted with plain indifference to employee safety.
The company had been cited with the same violations September 11 on a different site and had to fix the safety violations before it could resume work, according to Cal/OSHA. On October 27, D’Arcy was fined $5,465 for those earlier violations, which it contested.
D'Arcy was also cited with six other violations in the September 28 fatal collapse, including serious violations for failure to conduct daily safety inspections of the trench before an employee entered, and failure to properly use equipment and materials to prevent employee exposure to trenching hazards. A serious violation exists when the workplace hazard could cause an accident or illness that would most likely result in death or serious physical harm, unless the employer did not know or could not have known of the violation.
“Excavations are known hazards and trenches must be evaluated, shored or shielded before workers enter to protect them,” said Acting Cal/OSHA Chief Debra Lee. “This worker’s death is tragic because it was avoidable.”
