Investigators Show the Routine Errors behind Jobsite Deaths
On Oct. 9, driver Brian Anderson's dump truck knocked down and crushed James Lee Causey, a 60-year-old working for Moran Environmental Recovery, which was repairing a collapsed culvert at a former municipal dump in Gainesville, Fla. "The driver feels [that] the victim knew the truck was there," a city police officer told a local reporter. The accident was a fragment of local news, a humdrum industrial accident worth only a few paragraphs in the Gainesville, Fla., Sun.
When construction closes the books on 2002, there will be another 1,200 or so James Lee Causeys and the cumulative loss of life and treasure will be more apparent. The industry had 1,225 fatalities in 2001, according to the U.S. Labor Dept., an all-time high. Very few of the deaths receive much public notice. That is because death is an unobtrusive predator on U.S. construction sites, striking in maddeningly routine mishaps, disguising itself in the numbing repetitions of the day, coiling inside the steel and trucks and backhoes used to do the work. Unlike the more spectacular structural collapses that draw attention from reporters and often appear in the pages of ENR, most of the 1,200 workers die in run-of-the-mill disasters that cause what medical personnel describe as "trauma." The deaths come from the rupturing pressure of a rotating crane cab that catches a worker against a wall, from the impact of a short fall following a slip, or from being in the blind spot of a backing truck--like James Lee Causey.