Photo courtesy AWEA EVOLUTION As development in the wind industry reaches maturity, safety-standard requirements are growing. Workers are often perched 60 ft to 100 ft off the ground during installations. As the wind industry expands its reach across the nation and prepares to begin building offshore wind farms, federal agencies and contractors are focusing on improving safety for the growing industry.“Whether you are erecting a wind farm in the mountains of Colorado or the cornfields of Iowa, you can run into a totally different situation and weather can change in a second,” says Brian Sturtecky, area director at the Jacksonville,
Albania Deleon, 41, a fugitive who falsified asbestos certifications for thousands of illegal aliens, was sentenced Sept. 13 in U.S. District Court in Boston to more than seven years in prison. Judge Nathaniel Gorton also ordered her to pay $1.2-million in back taxes and $369,015 in restitution to AIM Mutual Insurance Co., Burlington, Mass. Deleon owned and operated New England’s largest certified asbestos school, Environmental Compliance Training, which issued at least 2,500 certifications to people who hadn't taken courses from 2001 to 2007.Deleon fled the country in 2008, sawing off her ankle monitor and leaving behind her 3-year-old son, following
A crane set up on the south side of the historic Washington National Cathedral fell over at 10:55 a.m. Wednesday, according to a post on the cathedral's web page.The crane had been erected to stabilize debris shaken loose from the cathedral by the Aug. 23 magnitude 5.8 earthquake whose epicenter was in central Virginia.The crane operator suffered “slight injuries” and was treated on the scene, says Lon Walls, spokesman for the D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services Dept. There were no other injuries, Walls says.According to the cathedral’s statement, the crane did not hit the cathedral, but did fall against
Construction industry and labor union officials say a new federal report that construction fatalities declined 10% last year suggests the industry is getting safer. The officials also were encouraged that construction's 2010 fatality rate, a better indicator of safety trends, was down as well.However, construction still has more fatalities than any other industry.According to preliminary data released on Aug. 25 by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 751 workers in the construction industry died on the job last year, compared with 834 in 2009. BLS will release its final 2010 numbers next spring.BLS suggests the sluggish economy could have contributed
Separate incidents of equipment failure caused two construction-worker fatalities in Ohio and Colorado, prompting probes and fines by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA is looking into a July 26 scaffold collapse that killed one cement mason and injured two others at a site near Denver.The trio, employed by B-W Masonry Inc., a Denver subcontractor, were on a scaffold 30 ft in the air when it collapsed. Support planks that broke away may have been to blame, says a firm spokesman.In Defiance, Ohio, Advantage Powder Coating received a proposed $159,600 OSHA fine for 15 safety violations linked to
Massachusetts Secretary of Transportation Jeffrey Mullan is planning to step down from his post, according to the governor's office. Although the exact date of his transition is not yet clear, the news of his departure comes amid a string of executive exits from the agency over its handling of safety and structural problems in Boston's $14- billion “Big Dig” central artery project.The Boston Globe, citing anonymous sources, reported that Mullan's departure was decided before the most recent controversy over MassDOT's handling of a 110-lb light fixture that fell in a Big Dig tunnel in February.Mullan was not available to comment
A worker died and 15 others were injured when the partially-built roof of the De Grolsch Veste soccer stadium in Enschede, the Netherlands, collapsed around noon on July 7. Investigations by the municipality, the public prosecutor and others have started. The accident occurred during a project, started this February, to add an additional tier of seats and roof to one section of the stadium. The facility, owned by the soccer club FC Twente, is approximately 160 km east of Amsterdam.Steelwork subcontractor Voortman Staalbouw B.V., Rijssen, confirms that the worker that died was an employee named Dave Nijkamp. About 125 workers
The trial judge cleared the remaining defendant of charges July 6 in the Deutsche Bank fire trial in New York City.Criminal Court Judge Rena K. Uviller acquitted Mitchel Alvo, 58, a site manager for the subcontractor at the former Deutsche Bank building, which was undergoing asbestos abatement and demolition at the time of the fire in 2007. The jury cleared two other former managers, Jeffrey Melofchik and Salvatore DePaolo, on June 29.Uviller also tossed out the major charges against the subcontractor, The John Galt Corp., convicting the company only of a misdemeanor count of reckless endangerment. Alvo and the firm
A jury acquitted a second supervisor in the Deutsche bank fire trial. The jury acquitted Jeffrey Melofchik, the safety supervisor for Bovis Lend Lease, the principal contractor during the demolition of the structure at Ground Zero in New York City, of charges that included manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. A fire during asbestos abatement work in 2007 killed two New York City firefighters. Less than 24 hours earlier, the same jurors had cleared Salvatore DePaola, the abatement supervisor for John Galt Corp. One more Galt employee, Mitchell Alvo, still is awaiting a verdict by the trial judge in State Supreme
Compared to all construction workplace safety penalties, the number of safety-related criminal prosecutions in the industry is small. Such cases force prosecutors out of their familiar territory of thieves, drug dealers and killers into the technical and organizational complexities of the jobsite. PHOTO BY GETTY IMAGES / MATT CARDY GUILTY Peter Eaton (middle), the principal of engineering firm Cotswold Geotechnical, leaves court. His firm was convicted under Englands corporate homicide law. Related Links: Charges Filed Against California Construction Foreman Prosecutor's Reasons for Indicting Cotswold Geotechnical Testimony by OSHA Official Requesting Right to Seek More Prison Penalties But if the civil