A contractor who assigned workers to enter unprotected trenches on more than one occasion faces penalties of $449,583 following a fatal cave-in in Colorado, according to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Marlon Diaz, age 20, was working for A4S Construction of Vail installing residential sewer lines when he was buried in a trench collapse November 16 and died. Two other workers were in the trench at a new housing development overlooking the Breckenridge Ski Resort and escaped unharmed.
Then on December 20, OSHA inspectors observed a similar violation of workers on the same construction site in a section of a trench that did not have cave-in protection. And they reported that trenches had collapsed before on the project.
“Between August and December 2021, the employer routinely assigned workers to work inside trenches that were not protected from cave-ins by an adequate protective system,” according to OSHA’s citation issued May 13.
“A4S Construction’s failure to comply with excavation requirements cost a worker his life,” said OSHA Area Director Amanda Kupper in Denver. “Our investigation found that this employer willfully sent workers into unprotected trenches at a site with a history of cave-ins, and continued to expose workers to the same conditions even after the fatality.”
Fire department personnel who responded to the fatal collapse reported seeing a trench box on the site, but it was not in the trench.
Colorado was the site of a fatal cave-in in 2018 that killed 50-year-old Rosario “Chayo” Martínez, who was installing a water line in an 8-foot-deep trench. His employer, Bryan D. Johnson, president of residential and commercial general contractor ContractOne of Avon, was sentenced to 10 months in jail after pleading guilty to two counts of reckless endangerment and one count of third-degree assault.
