BY TRENCHb776141bb4b7592b6152-dbef5d8ae260c3bb21474ba0e94bcba6.r94… · 2018-12-04 · Buried...

equipmentworld.com | June 2018

®

P.11

Trench collapses take lives,

devastate families and ruin

businesses.Here’s how toprevent them.

SPECIAL REPORT:

DEATHTRENCH

BY

EW0618_Cover.indd 1 5/25/18 2:06 PM

EquipmentWorld.com | June 2018 11

SPECIAL REPORT:

DEATHTRENCH

BY

Families find few answers to “why?”Expect more criminal charges in trench deathsFirst on the sceneTrench rescues are methodical, labor intensive and often unsuccessful.

What to expect when an OSHA compliance officer investigatesHow to dig an early graveTrench protection: Bigmission, big business

When it comes to construction fatalities, trench deaths are easy to overlook. The number of deaths – 51 between 2016

and 2017 – falls far below the top four culprits of construction deaths: falls, electrocution, struck by object and caught-in/between.

But trench deaths are particularly distressing, as the victims often spend several minutes in agony before succumbing. Co-workers look on helplessly, or in trying a rescue, may also die. Families are forever haunted by the loss.

Most frustrating of all: every death could have been prevented, if the company had installed worker protection.

In this special report, Equipment World exam-ines the human loss and business implications behind the statistics and what contractors and workers must do to prevent deaths by trench.

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Buried alive in Blue Earth CountyHow one contractor’s missteps took one life, shattered others and ruined his business.Not so great escapesTrench collapse survivors live with fear,disabilities and recriminations.

EW0618_Trench Intro2.indd 11 5/25/18 2:53 PM

June 2018 | EquipmentWorld.com12

1/6/16 – Justin Dean (J. D.) Jorgensen, 30, JRS Excavating, St. Charles, IA • 1/26/16 – Harold Felton, 36, Alki Construction, Seattle, WA 2/13/16 – Mario Tejada Melchor, 20, Principal Services, Humble, TX • 3/1/16 – Aaron T. Pfannenstiel, 44, J Corporation, Hays, KS

Trench-collapse fatalities 2016-2017 • Presented in chronological order, by victim, employer and parties cited by OSHA.

DEATH BY TRENCH

Buried aliveIN Blue Earth CountyHow one contractor’s missteps took one life, shattered others and ruined his business.

This photograph, taken by a Minne-sota OSHA investi-gator, shows how the 28-foot-deep trench appeared the day after it caved in.

EW0618_Trench Buried Alive.indd 12 5/25/18 1:19 PM


From 28 feet above him, Casey Rady heard his boss shout.

“Get in the trench box!”Fifteen feet above him, a long

horizontal crack formed in the ex-cavation wall.

“I glanced up to see what was go-ing on,” Rady recalls, “and I could see pieces of it cracking, and it was like a whole shelf started to come loose.”

Panic set in. “Which way do we go?” he recalls thinking.

Standing in 6 to 8 inches of water, he spotted an extra sec-tion of 4-foot-diameter plastic pipe floating in the trench box.

He grabbed the sleeve of his child-hood friend and co-worker Dave Erickson and dragged him toward the pipe, hop-ing to find protection from the ensuing col-lapse. As he ducked to enter the pipe, he lost his grip on Erickson’s sleeve.

Rady looked back. Erickson stood in the trench box as if fro-zen, staring up at the collapsing wall.

As the wall of dirt caved in on them, so did a large spoil pile that was less than 2 feet from the edge of the excavation. The closeness of the pile was one of many safety violations OSHA would cite Rady and Erickson’s employer, Vortex Drain Tiling, with follow-ing the June 13, 2016, collapse in Blue Earth County, Minnesota. Investigators said the lack of planning and safety precautions

by Vortex owner Ryan Safranski set the stage for catastrophe – an avoidable cave-in that ended with the company’s demise and a 28-year-old decorated war veteran buried alive.

It was the last time Rady saw his

best friend alive. He was 7 or 8 years old when

he first met Erickson, who was two years younger. Soon, they were playing Little League in the small community of Ironwood on Michi-gan’s western edge and hunting

and fishing together. Erickson’s mother and father became like second parents to Rady. His parents held the same role for Erickson.

As teens, they worked at a local car wash, spending their earnings on four-wheelers and snowmobiles, which they constantly had to fix. Erickson was a motor head, always

tinkering.Two years after

high school gradua-tion, Erickson joined the Army. As a part-ing gift, he gave his analog Fossil watch to Rady before head-ing to basic training at Fort Sill, Okla-homa. He went on to serve two tours in Afghanistan as a combat medic in the 10th Mountain Divi-sion, earning a dozen medals and ribbons, including two Army Commendation Med-als. He was honorably discharged as a ser-geant Nov. 19, 2014.

After Erickson re-turned to Ironwood, Rady helped him set-tle into an apartment. Erickson still enjoyed four-wheeling, and he rode motorcycles. He loved to cook and was known for his big smile.

“He was probably one of the biggest goofballs you’d ever meet,” Rady says. “Ev-

erything was a joke, and I’m the same way, so we got along great. And anybody that was around us felt it; it just shed out. Everybody was in a better mood because he was there.”

Rady had been working for

1/6/16 – Justin Dean (J. D.) Jorgensen, 30, JRS Excavating, St. Charles, IA • 1/26/16 – Harold Felton, 36, Alki Construction, Seattle, WA 2/13/16 – Mario Tejada Melchor, 20, Principal Services, Humble, TX • 3/1/16 – Aaron T. Pfannenstiel, 44, J Corporation, Hays, KS

David Erickson served two tours in Afghanistan as a combat medic in the 10th Mountain Division, earning a dozen medals and ribbons, including two Army Commendation Medals. He began working for Vortex Drain Tiling in Fall 2015.

by Joy Powell



Vortex Drain Tiling of Grand Forks, North Dakota, for about six months. He offered Erickson a full-time job on his crew in the fall of 2015, with plans to train him to become a heavy equipment operator.

“I promised his mom and dad that I would keep him safe,” Rady recalls.

In May 2016, Erickson and Rady started work on Blue Earth County Ditch 28 near tiny Madelia, Minnesota. An old 36-inch steel drain-age pipe had collapsed, stopping the water flow and flooding farms. The small Vortex crew was installing new drain tile and connecting two drainage ditches that flowed to the Watonwan River.

The new dual-wall polypropylene pipe was 48 inches in diam-eter and 3 inches thick. Vortex owner Safranski anticipated a November completion date for the project, which involved installing two miles of drain tile and reconnecting to existing pipe.

Erickson and Rady liked work-ing in the countryside, away from traffic.

“There’s a lot of days where it was so wet it was just him and me and dozers,” recalls Rady. “He would be in a D7 and I’d be in a D9, and it’d just be fun, like when we were four-wheeling. We had radios. We were getting work done. I was showing him how to run equipment, and he was getting

some good seat time.”Working 330 miles from Iron-

wood, they roomed together at a motel in the Madelia area. Some-times at night, they confided in each other. Erickson told Rady about his post-traumatic stress dis-order since serving in Afghanistan, where he stitched up the wound-ed, amputated limbs, comforted the dying.

Though the two friends found peacefulness and even good times together on the jobsite, their days were often punctuated by prob-lems getting money from Safranski

for needed supplies, Rady says.

“We were supposed to have silt fencing up because of all the rain and runoff,” Rady says. “I was never able to get that.”

The money prob-lems cropped up “on a day-to-day basis,” he adds. “I couldn’t get fuel. We couldn’t get motel rooms.” So Rady would charge motel rooms on his credit card and sometimes get reimbursed, and he’d pay for fuel.

Erosion was another problem, says Chuck Brandel, an agricul-tural drainage expert and president of ISG, the engineering firm hired by Blue Earth County for the proj-ect. The soil was so non-cohesive it was like quicksand. During the excavation, the crew dug through two water tables. Even with two pumps run-

ning constantly, they often slogged through 6 to 8 inches of water on the excavation bottom.

ISG was also concerned about spoil piles being placed too close to the edge, Brandel says. But they had limited say over the work, ac-cording to Brandel.

“We have to be careful not to tell them, ‘Hey, you need to construct your trench this way.’ Because that’s their job, not our job,” he says. Telling a contractor how to dig a trench could have made the engineering firm liable if some-thing went wrong, he says.

3/1/16 – James Lee (Jake) Jacobs, 66, J Corporation, Hays, KS • 3/21/16 – Jimmy Dale Spencer, 61, Clau-Chin Construction, Alliance, NE; Larry Kessler Construction, Scottsbluff, NE • 3/29/16 – Alexander J. Marcotte, 28, Aqua Ohio, Boardman, OH

Trench-collapse fatalities 2016-2017 (continued)

Dave Erickson (left) and longtime friend Adam Kennedy take a riverside break near Madelia, Minnesota. They and another lifelong friend, Casey Rady, grew up in Ironwood, Michigan, and worked together on excavating and drain tile installation projects.



Minnesota OSHA said the spoil piles were on the edge of the excavation, leaving no distinction between them and the excavation walls.

Having the spoil pile too close isn’t only a worry because dirt can fall in, but also because the weight can put additional pressure on the walls, which can cause them to cave in, explains James Krueger, director of Workplace Safety Pro-grams for Minnesota OSHA.

“That’s why you have to have it 2 feet back,” he says, “or you have to have some type of structure to keep those employees safe.”

Safranski did not use a protec-tive system designed by a profes-sional engineer, as OSHA standards require in an excavation that deep, Krueger notes.

Vortex did have some protec-tion with trench boxes, but it was inadequate and improperly used, OSHA determined. For about a week, Vortex used a 10-foot-tall trench box with an 8-foot-tall trench box stacked on top. But as the weight of the soil increased on the boxes, it became more difficult to move them as the digging pro-gressed. Rather than dismantle the boxes and stack them again, the top trench box was removed and set aside, Rady said.

They removed about a bucket-width of dirt from alongside the remaining 20-foot-long trench box, filled that area with rock about halfway up to the pipe, and then compacted the rock. They did that,

Rady says, because they could move the trench box through the rock easier than through dirt.

The ground in the area also might have been disturbed 35 years ago when the original drain-age pipe was installed. The engi-neering plan shows that the new 48-inch drain tile would intersect at points with the 36-inch tile installed in 1981. Rady says that knowledge could have made a difference in how they handled the excavation because of the greater potential for unstable soil and cave-in due to the previously disturbed dirt.

“There was another trench there and they very well could have intersected it, and that could have been softer soil or it could have been less compacted soil,” Brandel confirms. “Yeah, they should have been aware of that. That potential was there because there were in-stances on our plans where we did cross the original trenches.”

Brandel says that information was in the plan given to the con-tractor. But Rady says Safranski never passed that on to him.

Safranski could not be reached for comment for this story.

“All I could see was his knee”On Friday, June 10, 2016, Safranski and crew dug out the latest phase of the excavation. It began to rain, so they knocked off at 3 p.m.

It rained hard all weekend, so they didn’t return to the jobsite until 1 p.m. the following Monday.

Six inches of rain had collected in the excavation bottom. Though water in an excavation can under-mine its sides, Safranski did not take adequate precautions to pro-tect his workers, OSHA said.

He also did not provide a ladder or any other safe means of enter-ing and exiting the excavation, according to the agency. Rady said it was easier to scramble up the dirt incline than to keep moving a ladder and setting it up in water.

Operating an excavator that day, Safranski hoisted a 20-foot section of new pipe into the excavation. He realized the pipe was pierced, then entered the excavation to help Erickson and Rady remove the damaged section and re-secure the remaining section to a second pipe that was already placed on grade at the bottom of the excavation.

They cut out the damaged 2-foot section of drain tile using a Sawzall and installed a coupler underneath to connect the two good pipes. Erickson and Rady began shovel-ing rock to even the grade. It was tough going, so they took turns shoveling. Safranski moved to higher ground.

It was then they noticed the west side of the excavation “ooz-ing slowly like a liquid,” the OSHA report says.

Dirt began falling in and around the south end of the trench box. Rady had made it to the damaged pipe section to seek safety. He’s not sure, but Rady thinks Erickson may have shoved him into the

3/1/16 – James Lee (Jake) Jacobs, 66, J Corporation, Hays, KS • 3/21/16 – Jimmy Dale Spencer, 61, Clau-Chin Construction, Alliance, NE; Larry Kessler Construction, Scottsbluff, NE • 3/29/16 – Alexander J. Marcotte, 28, Aqua Ohio, Boardman, OH

DEATH BY TRENCH

“ – Casey Rady

And then when the dirt started falling on me, my head was underwater and you could still hear dirt falling. You’d feel sand and water in your ears and your nose. I just thought that was the last thing that I was ever going to hear. ”



pipe a moment before the avalanche.

“When I went to lean forward and jump in, my hand slipped from him, and that’s when every-thing hit, and I could hear what sounded like an earthquake,” Rady says.

He saw Erickson stand-ing motionless until he was hit by the falling soil and disappeared under the water and dirt.

“When it hit the side of the trench box, it sounded like thunder,” Rady says. “And then when the dirt started falling on me, my head was underwater and you could still hear dirt falling. You’d feel sand and water in your ears and your nose. I just thought that was the last thing that I was ever go-ing to hear.”

Rady thought he’d never see his 5-year-old son again. He prayed. When the collapse subsided, he crawled out of the pipe.

“I looked for Dave – all I could see was his knee,” he recalls.

Rady fled from the trench box until the avalanche had completely stopped.

Then, desperate to save his friend, he rushed back and clawed at the soil, ripping off his finger-nails as he dug. Safranski scrab-bled through the dirt and water to help, but they couldn’t move a heavy chunk of dirt that had fallen on Erickson. Other workers rushed to help.

Muddy water began to rise, sub-merging Erickson.

Madelia ambulance and volunteer firefighters were among the first res-

cuers to arrive. They initially could see Erickson’s foot, they told Blue Earth County sheriff’s Lt. Jeremy Brennan. But as soil continued to fall around the trench box and wa-ter entered, even that small sign of Erickson disappeared.

“The trench box had approxi-mately 3 to 4 feet of water, along with soil that had fallen off of the sides and filled in around the south side of the trench box,” Brennan wrote in his report.

Conditions were too hazardous for rescue workers to enter the excavation.

Brennan called Rady out of the excavation for safety reasons.

“I was still down there with a damn shovel and mini excavator trying to dig and dig,” Rady says.

“They pulled me out of that equipment because I didn’t want to quit. I just wanted him out… and it took a sheriff’s deputy and somebody else to pretty much pull me out of the excavator.”

The operation was put on hold until the Mankato Fire Confined Space Rescue Team arrived from 23 miles away. Trained in trench rescues, team members knew they first had to stabilize the excavation. Authorities arranged for five construction com-panies and the city of Mankato to bring in ex-cavators and other heavy equipment and operators to make conditions safer. They used a trash pump to try to stay ahead of the water that continued to flow in.

By 8 p.m., the Mankato team could enter the trench box. They soon located Erickson’s body under 3 feet of water, partially cov-ered by soil.

The responders freed Erickson’s body at 8:15 p.m., more than five hours after the collapse.

As he sat outside the hotel, Rady saw the ambulance bearing Erickson’s body as it headed to a mortuary.

“When they came over the over-pass, I was sitting outside the motel because nobody really wanted me there when they pulled him out,” recalls Rady, who had been highly

5/3/16 – Ernesto Saucedo-Zapada, 26, Hard Rock Construction, Meridian, ID • 5/3/16 – Bert Smith Jr., 36, Hard Rock Construction, Meridian, ID • 5/4/16 – Samuel Tyler (Tyler) Williams, 22, L-M Asphalt Partners dba ATS Construction, Lexington, KY


Dave Erickson signed on with Vortex Drain Tiling about nine months before his death. In this photo taken on Oct. 1, 2015, he’s on a project in Herman, which is in Grant County, Minnesota.


emotional at the scene. “I wanted to remember him in a better way.”

Months after promising to keep their son safe, Rady had to callErickson’s parents to tell them about the tragedy.

The next day, as Rady droveErickson’s truck and belongings back to Ironwood to deliver them to his parents, the Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s Office per-formed an autopsy.

Medical examiners determined that Erickson died of asphyxia due to chest compression and that the water that submerged him did not play a role in his death.

It was a death that could have been prevented, experts say.

The fatality was primarily due to a contractor’s lack of foresight and no protective system designed by an engineer for an excavation deeper than 20 feet, says Krueger, with Min-nesota OSHA.

“It’s all about the preplanning and thinking what you’re going to do be-fore you begin that work,” Krueger says. “And that’s really how you want to prevent these types of ac-cidents and injuries from occurring.”

After its investigation of the collapse, Minnesota OSHA cited Safranski, owner of Vortex Drain Til-ing, with eight serious violations and fined him $104,375.

Six months after the cave-in, Safranski declared bankruptcy and liquidated his company. The fines have not been paid.

“A hole in my heart”Services for Erickson were held

June 28, 2016, at Our Lady of Peace Catholic Church in Iron-wood. Rady was a pallbearer, along with Army sergeants who had served with Erickson. There were full military honors at River-side Cemetery.

“The loss is so great,” says Erick-son’s mother, Mary Ann, her voice breaking. “There’s a hole in my heart that will never be filled. It devastates the family.”

Both Rady and Erickson’s family think often of how Erickson sur-vived battles in the deserts of Af-ghanistan, only to die in a muddy

field in Minnesota. “You worry about him over there

twice,” says Mary Ann Erickson of her son’s two combat tours, “and then he comes home, and you think you don’t have to worry any-more. And then this happens.

“I keep thinking about what he must have gone through that day.”

She wants her son’s story to be told.

“Maybe it will help contractors think about the safety involved for these workers and maybe they’ll figure out a way of protecting them a little more than this one did,” she says. “I don’t want another parent to go through what we’re going through.”

Following the collapse, Rady has undergone therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder through a workers’ compensation program. He grapples with nightmares and other after-effects.

“I’m deathly afraid of heights or anything to do with an edge or having to look down into a trench,” he says. “I have panic attacks.”

Rady cherishes the Fossil watch Erickson gave him before heading to basic training. It’s so scratched that Rady can barely see the hands.

“I still have it, I’m wearing it right now,” he says. “I’ve put maybe 10 batteries in it and had a bunch of work done on it, but I would never get rid of that watch.”

For him, the watch isn’t just for telling time. It’s a reminder of his friend and happier times.


5/3/16 – Ernesto Saucedo-Zapada, 26, Hard Rock Construction, Meridian, ID • 5/3/16 – Bert Smith Jr., 36, Hard Rock Construction, Meridian, ID • 5/4/16 – Samuel Tyler (Tyler) Williams, 22, L-M Asphalt Partners dba ATS Construction, Lexington, KY

DEATH BY TRENCH

“ – Mary Ann Erickson

I keep thinking about what he must have gone through that day.”

Dave Erickson of Ironwood, Michi-gan, survived combat in Afghanistan, where he was a decorated medic, only to die in a Minnesota field after an excavation caved in during a drain tile project.



It was going to be an easy fix.

The backhoe operator had clipped a small drainage pipe,

and water poured into the6 ½-foot trench. As the opera-tor scooped the water out of the

trench, Eric Giguere watched. No problem. They’d get the pipe

fixed, and Giguere would be off on his honeymoon.

He went into the hole, knelt down to inspect the pipe and found himself fearing he was taking his last breaths when the trench collapsed on him. “I kind of saw it out of the corner of my

DEATH BY TRENCH

Not so great escapes

Trench collapse survivors live with fear, disabilities and recriminations.

5/5/16 – Michael Casey Holland, 29, TC Excavating, Oregon City, OR • 6/7/16 – Matthew Josiah Jarrett, 38, Breakaway Incorporated, Sutton, WV


Emergency re-sponders treat Eric after co-workers uncovered him following a trench collapse. Giguere was buried by the collapse of the 6 ½ -foot trench and on the brink of death, requiring the use of a defibrillator to revive him.

by Wayne Grayson

EW0618_Trench Survivors.indd 19 5/25/18 1:23 PM

eye, and I let out a loud scream,” Giguere recalls.

The dirt filled his eyes, ears and mouth. It wrapped around his body like a straitjacket, getting tighter with every at-tempted breath.

The earth squeezed until his skin turned blue, the weight methodically crack-ing each of his ribs, puncturing a lung and bursting the blood vessels in his eyes. It stripped him of oxy-gen and killed pieces of his brain.

In the span of 10 slow minutes, the dirt changed Giguere, too. Shovels, CPR, a defi-brillator and years of therapy were needed to bring him back.

But Giguere knows he’s lucky. Most work-ers in trench collapses don’t survive. Those who do walk away are forever changed.

“I knew I was goingto die”The trench that col-lapsed onto Giguere didn’t start out as much. On that October day in 2002, the crew began installing water lines into a 4-foot trench. As they con-tinued down the road, an inspector said they needed to put more cover on the pipe.

The trench deepened gradually to 5 feet.

“When we reached the 5-foot mark, we were supposed to

stop, assess the situation and put a trench box in,” Giguere says.

But the boss stepped in. At that point, Giguere’s construc-

tion experience was primarily on

heavy highway jobs rather than in trenches. He knew his boss, how-ever, had worked in trenches for 30 years – without a trench box.

“Nothing had ever happened to him, which made us comfortable,” Giguere says.

Eventually the trench reached 6 ½ feet deep, and that’s when the backhoe operator nicked the drainage pipe. Since all the other crew members were retrieving pipes, picking up loads of stone and digging out additional trench, Giguere entered the trench alone.

Giguere doesn’t remember much about being buried alive. He figures he was conscious beneath the soil for about 90 seconds. He was filled with dread. Would his co-workers even know where to start digging?

“There came a point where I knew I was going to die,” Giguere says. “There wasn’t a pain to it. It was just gasping for air. … I was panicked and I re-member thinking, ‘I’m going to die because we didn’t do this the right way.’”

A nearby co-worker had heard Giguere’s scream. He alerted the others.

Giguere blacked out.

“These guys had to make a hard decision,” Giguere says. “They


6/13/16 – David James Erickson, 28, Vortex Drain Tiling, Grand Forks, ND • 6/15/16 – James B. Rogers, 33, KRW Plumbing, Jamestown, OH 6/20/16 – Nathan Halteman, 52, Halteman’s Construction, Lebanon, PA • 7/14/16 – Louis Thomas, 25, Crocker Construction, Grand Cane, LA

DEATH BY TRENCH

“– Eric Giguere, Safety Awareness Solutions

When you get yourself in a place where you’re

6 1/2 feet underground with dirt crushing the life out of you, you’re just a scared little boy or a scared little girl wishing you could start the day over.”



knew if they used shovels they’d never get to me in time. But they knew if the operator used the ma-chine that he might hit me with that bucket and kill me.”

The crew decided to do both. They used the machine to remove the first few feet of dirt, then shoveled the rest of the way down. Giguere says the crew “had no idea where I was,” but they were able to uncover him after about 10 minutes. By the time they got to him, he was bleeding from cuts delivered by the shovels. He had no pulse.

A co-worker ad-ministered CPR for 11 minutes until an ambulance arrived. An EMT shocked Giguere with a defibrillator, jumpstarting his heart before continuing to perform CPR. He was placed on life sup-port and air lifted to a hospital.

Finding dirt in his lungs, doctors told his family he probably wouldn’t survive. “And if I did, they said, I would almost defi-nitely be brain dead,” Giguere says.

“The fact that I’m alive? I’m a walking miracle.”

Giguere’s short-term memory is impaired, part of the brain dam-age he experienced. He also suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. He began

cognitive therapy immediately and continued the sessions for nearly three years. “I was afraid of the dark and tight spaces,” Giguere says. Movie theaters were especial-

ly troubling. “It took me 12 years just to be able to swim again.”

The stress of recovery and the financial burden of being unable to return to work bore heavily on

Giguere’s marriage. He and his wife eventu-ally divorced. Giguere never went back to work as a construction worker. But he would return to the industry in a different capacity.

The death of SupermanAs he retrieved a dropped shovel in the 13-foot trench, Dave Spurr heard a co-work-er shout. The trench gave way.

“It’s completely black,” Spurr re-calls. “When they dug me out and got me far enough where they could grab my arms and pull me out, my chest felt like you had dropped 2,000 pounds of weight on top of it.

“Everybody says it feels like getting hit by a truck, and that’s ex-actly what it felt like.”

Spurr was buried in a matter of seconds, and for what he estimates was about five excruci-ating minutes, he clung to life, unable to move or breathe.

It was death without the dying.

Though the collapse happened 16 years ago, Spurr, 52, now owner and president of Spurr Company in Paso Robles, California, viv-idly recalls the details.


6/13/16 – David James Erickson, 28, Vortex Drain Tiling, Grand Forks, ND • 6/15/16 – James B. Rogers, 33, KRW Plumbing, Jamestown, OH 6/20/16 – Nathan Halteman, 52, Halteman’s Construction, Lebanon, PA • 7/14/16 – Louis Thomas, 25, Crocker Construction, Grand Cane, LA

DEATH BY TRENCH

“– Dave Spurr, Spurr Company

Thirteen feet was not a big deal to me. I had

done it all my life. You feel like Superman; like nothing can happen to you.”


“I had been in business about seven years at the time. I had a crew of about 13 people, and I had been in a lot of deep trenches,” Spurr says. “Thirteen feet was not a big deal to me. I had done it all my life.

“You feel like Super-man, like nothing can happen to you.”

Spurr and his crew were running a sewer line down a hill to tie it into a mainline along a street. He was operat-ing a backhoe while his crew worked at the tie-in point inside the trench. The crew had placed shoring jacks in the part of the trench where they were work-ing, to protect against collapse.

Spurr was extend-ing the trench, digging about 50 feet away from his crew, when he noticed a square-point shovel had fallen in.

“I said, ‘Heck, I’ll just hop off the backhoe and go into the trench real quick and grab that shovel,” Spurr says.

As he grabbed the shovel, a laborer who was checking grade alongside Spurr noticed a crack forming on top of the trench. He shouted an alarm down to Spurr.

Spurr considered run-ning toward his crew with the hopes of mak-ing it to the shoring be-fore the soil collapsed. But that seemed too far away, so he went back the way he came. He

wasn’t quick enough.“I had my arm bent up as if you

were raising your hand when it covered me. I figured I could move my hand up to signal where I was,

but I couldn’t move my hand at all,” Spurr says.

The earth pinned his head and body against the side of the trench. The clay-like soil that had voids in

it gave him three or four breaths worth of oxygen. But the benefit of air was a double-edged sword. With each breath, the soil that stretched at least 2 feet above his head constricted tighter around him.

“You go to take a breath and you can’t take another because of the pressure of it,” he says. “You breathe out and you go to breathe in, and the dirt settles in against your stomach tighter.”

His terror increased when he heard the backhoe fire up. Would the machine’s bucket kill him as it searched for him be-neath the soil?

“The only thing that saved my life was that I had a guy with me who knew where I was in the trench,” he says.

Eventually the crew uncovered a portion of Spurr’s hat and began digging in front of him, releasing the soil’s grip from his chest and face. “I was right at the end of not being able to breathe anymore,” he says. “I thought I had taken my last breath.”

When he emerged from the trench, the


7/25/16 – Jimmy Scott Klous, 48, Dave Perkins Contracting, Anoka, MN • 8/1/16 – Edward Patrick Webb, 36, MI Farms, Elm City, NC; DL Lewis Excavation, Rocky Mount, NC • 8/8/16 – Noe Reyes, 49, Jaho Incorporated, Humble, TX • 8/31/16 – Nathan L. Fryday, 22, Mercer Construction, Edna,TX


DEATH BY TRENCH

“– Joe Porchetta, GMP Contracting

My message to my guys is that no one’s life is

worth it. If it’s not safe, you don’t do it. We regroup, we figure out how to make it safe. I can’t re-place a life.”



pain set in. “My whole body hurt, and the first thing I said to them was, ‘You gotta get me to the hospital.’”

A week later, the terror of the incident came rush-ing back during a follow-up hospital visit.

“I had to go and do some MRIs. They did a lot of neurological tests be-cause the lack of oxygen for that amount of time can damage your brain,” he says. “I couldn’t do it. They actually had to get me into a bigger machine and give me some pills to relax just so I could go through it.”

“That’s what’s really weird about the whole thing,” he adds. “What it does to your life af-terward. Before, I was never claustrophobic. Now I am.”

“I need to get out of this business”A dive and a pipe saved Joe Porchetta’s life.

Now the owner of GMP Contracting in South Brunswick, New Jersey, Porchetta survived a trench collapse as a 20-year-old laborer at his uncle’s company during a summer break from college.

“We were installing a 36-inch storm pipe in the ground, and we ran into existing utilities that were in the way,” Porchetta explains. “There was a trench coming across our trench, so we weren’t cutting through virgin soil anymore.”

Porchetta says the utili-ties were in the way of the shoring. “So we took a chance and we skipped over that section instead of placing shoring, and we tried to continue lay-ing pipe.”

As the crew worked, the old trench caved in. Two of Porchetta’s uncles had eyes on the trench from the surface and yelled down to him when the collapse started. When he heard the shouts, he quickly dove into a pipe.

The pipe shielded much of Porchetta’s body from the crushing soil, though it still rushed around him covering him up nearly to his chest.

“I couldn’t move,” Por-chetta says. “My cousin was watching traffic may-be 300 or 400 feet down the road and he heard me screaming.”

Porchetta was trapped in the pipe for about an hour as his crewmates slowly moved away the dirt by hand while one of his uncles gently used an excavator to move much of the material from atop him.

The collapse occurred on Porchetta’s last day of work before returning to college. “I remember thinking, ‘I need to get out of this business,’” he says.

Get rid of that “stop-being-a-whine-ass” attitudeThough all three trench-collapse survivors expe-rienced different circum-stances, each of them

7/25/16 – Jimmy Scott Klous, 48, Dave Perkins Contracting, Anoka, MN • 8/1/16 – Edward Patrick Webb, 36, MI Farms, Elm City, NC; DL Lewis Excavation, Rocky Mount, NC • 8/8/16 – Noe Reyes, 49, Jaho Incorporated, Humble, TX • 8/31/16 – Nathan L. Fryday, 22, Mercer Construction, Edna,TX

DEATH BY TRENCH

NUCA holds third annual Trench Safety Stand Down, June 18-23

The Father’s Day timing is intentional.

“The last thing we wanted was for a family to be without their dad because of a shortcut,”

says Warren Graves with utility services contractor Team Fishel, Roanoke, Texas. Graves also is a member of the Safety Ambassadors Club with the National Utility Contractors Association (NUCA), sponsor of the Trench Safety Stand Down.

Working in trenches is dangerous, Graves says. The stand down is “an opportunity to make sure we get in front of the guys at least once a year with a trench safety message,” he adds.

The idea: NUCA provides the downloadable materials – available in both English and Spanish – for contractors to conduct their own stand down. These include instructions on how to prepare for the stand down, a sign-in sheet, handouts and a completion form.

Sometime during the week, the group asks contrac-tors to break for a toolbox talk or another safety activity to examine the specific hazards in trenching. In return, contractors report back to NUCA, detailing when they did the talk and how many of their em-ployees participated. Participating firms will receive a certificate of participation from NUCA, plus have their names published on a list of organizations that held a stand down.

Last year, NUCA says, it reached 10,000 people with its Trench Safety Stand Down, now in its third year. This year, the group hopes to double the amount of people reached. NUCA is asking its members to reach out to non-members, including plumbers, landscapers and smaller contractors, to help spread the word.

Graves says the Stand Down is important to Team Fishel. “You take just a few minutes to communicate the importance of doing the right thing the right way,” he explains. “You and your colleagues are part of a family, and we all need to take care of each other.”

The NUCA Stand Down is co-sponsored this year by OSHA and the North American Excavation Shoring Association.


has walked away with the same message: the “old way” of digging trenches is not the right way.

“There’s a certain confidence and macho-ness to working construction,” Giguere says. “We need to get rid of that ‘stop being a whine-ass’ type of at-titude toward safety. When you get yourself in a situation where you’re 6 ½ feet underground with dirt crushing the life out of you, you’re just a scared little boy or a scared little girl wishing you could start the day over.”

His experience gives Giguere credibility in his current con-sultant role at Safety Awareness Solutions, Geneva, New York. In 2017, he made 164 presentations, urging workers and their supervi-sors to take trench safety more seriously.

“I show up in the work boots I was buried in,” Giguere says.

Spurr and Porchetta say their experiences shaped how they run their businesses. Both men make every decision through the lens of safety.

“Our safety program since this happened has been above and beyond the norm,” Spurr says.

Porchetta says he has walked away from more than one job that he felt was putting his crews in danger.

“I know what I do pretty well, and if I don’t feel comfortable with it, I’m not going to do it,” he says. “My message to my guys is that no one’s life is worth it. If it’s not safe, you don’t do it. We re-group, we figure out how to make it safe. I can’t replace a life.”

“We were in a situation one time where one of my guys was excavating and there were issues with the trench,” Porchetta con-tinues. “We stopped everything. I told the guy to fill the hole back

in and start over.”Giguere says there are still parts

of him buried in that trench in Upstate New York.

“When people get in accidents, you always read that they were ‘treated and released.’ But what

does that really mean?” he asks. “My bones healed. But the

things you put your family through because we didn’t do things the right way? Those things don’t go away. They don’t forget it, and neither will you.”


9/9/16 – Juan Tenalozo, 25, Northeast Backflow, Lugoff, SC • 9/21/16 – Russell Allen Polen, 48, Broy and Son Pump Service, Berryville, VA


DEATH BY TRENCH

0 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Under 25

25-35

36-45

46-55

56 and over

Texas

Utah

Kansas

Ohio

Minnesota

Pennsylvania

12%

5

6

28%

3

26%

18%

16%

Dirt doesn’t discriminate

Examining trench fatalities that occurred over a two-year period, Equipment World found that those who’ve spent years working in construction are just as vulnerable as new workers. During 2016-2017, the youngest trench collapse victim was 18 years old; the oldest was 66.

Company hierarchy also doesn’t matter: four construction company owners died in trenches during this period.

In three incidents, there were two victims on one jobsite.

Average age of victim: 39 years old

Top 6 states for trench deaths (2016-2017)

Equipment World examination of 51 trench fatalities in 2016-17; age information unavailable on one fatality.

Equipment World examination of 51 trench fatalities in 2016-17

Trench fatalities occurred in 28 states, but these states had the highest number of deaths in the two-year period.

3

3

3



9/30/16 – Antonio Gonzalez, 41, Cap Construction, Cedar Hills, UT • 10/5/16 – William Bradford (Brad) Hargis, 28, SDT Contractors, Gates, TN 10/7/16 – Yongwhan Kim, 20, HADCO Construction, Lehi, UT • 10/8/16 – Benjamin Bartle, 28, Agassiz Drain Tile, Buxton, ND


Families find fewanswers to "why?"

“Contractors tell me trench protection is time consuming and it costs money. I don’t understand it. That extra bit of time and money should be worth it to save a life.”– Cheryl Spencer

"I wanted to go to the site, and no one would take me.”But Cheryl Spencer insisted.

She was there behind the police tape when first responders recovered her husband, Jimmy Dale Spencer, at 4:35 p.m. on March 21, 2016, she says. The 61-year-old died in an 8-foot trench in Alliance, Nebraska.

The morning of his death, Jimmy Spencer met with Shaun Houchin, his employer and owner of Clau-Chin Construction, and with Larry Kes-sler, owner of excavating contractor Larry Kessler Construction, to go over site soil conditions, according to the OSHA investigation.

Houchin had owned the lot for sev-

eral years and said he believed it was virgin soil. He also thought there was more clay in the area than was usual for the region. Houchin said the group felt it was safe to proceed, according to the investigation.

Mike Harvey, Clau-Chin’s fore-man, offered additional insight. He and Jimmy Spencer had talked about

EW0618_Families.indd 26 5/25/18 1:26 PM

trenches before. “Spencer told him how dangerous trenches were and that you were never supposed to get into a trench where the walls went straight up,” Harvey told OSHA.

Later that day, Jimmy was bent over, face down, attempting to con-nect PVC pipe to a new house when one side of the trench collapsed on him, covering him with 5 feet of soil, according to Cheryl Spencer’s legal complaint against Clau-Chin and Larry Kessler Construction.

Life changed dramatically for Spen-cer after that March day.

“When I go to bed, that side of the bed is empty,” she says. “When I eat meals, I have the wall for an eating companion. I don’t do what I used to do, because I have to do it alone.” Jimmy Spencer’s death came two months before the couple were to celebrate their 40th anniversary.

What befuddles Spencer is the attitude of some of the contractors she still knows. Instead of her husband’s death sound-ing a giant alarm in the contracting community, “they tell me that things went back to the way they were,” she says.

“Contractors tell me trench protection is time consuming and it costs money, I don’t understand it. That extra bit of time and money should be worth it to save a life.”

“What the hell happened?”“After they paid their fines and workman’s comp – to them, it was done.”

Jesus Garcia is talking about the death of his father, Alfredo Garcia, who died in a 6.4-foot-deep trench at the age of 47 on November 7, 2015. Garcia was an employee of Dan’s Excavating, Shelby

Township, Michigan. After an initial $21,000 fine for three $7,000 cita-tions, Michigan OSHA reduced two citations by 50 percent because of the company’s “prompt abatement efforts and the good faith it has shown” and issued no fine for the third citation. The total final fine: $7,000.

The family declined the company’s offer to pay for Alfredo’s funeral. “We didn’t know if that meant we couldn’t press charges later on,” Garcia says.

A naturalized American citizen, Alfredo was also a construction vet-eran. That is why his former foreman and family friend Robert “Bobby” Schmaus declares, “I just know in all the years he worked for me, he would know whether a trench was safe or not. I know he wouldn’t go into an unsafe trench.

“I want to know, what in the hell happened?”

So does Jesus Garcia, who pored over the documents he received from OSHA searching for answers. “It was a Saturday job and his first day with that crew and that supervisor,” he says. “Two people made it out when the trench collapsed, but the heavy clay got him and buried him between the waist and chest. There was noth-ing they could do.”

According to the Michigan Occupa-tional Safety and Health Administra-tion (MIOSHA) field narrative, one of six witnesses described the scene this way: “Alfredo was buried from the waist down, with the shovel handle wedging him against the north bank.” After the witness told someone to call 911, he said, “I personally jumped into the trench and rolled big chunks of clay off him. We pulled him up

onto the top of the bank.” The Macomb County Medical Examiner’s office said the cause of death was multiple blunt trau-matic injuries, according to the MIOSHA incident chronology.

MIOSHA’s responding Senior Safety Officer Jerry Zacharczuk noted in the incident chronology that he “asked if shoring or a trench box was used to protect the employees in the trench.” The answer: No. Zacharczuk also observed that the angle of repose on the trench was 71 degrees. “With this configuration of soil and type, it should have been 34 degrees,” he wrote.

In the aftermath of his father’s death, Garcia has had new responsibilities thrust upon him.

“I’m trying to take on the head-of-household role, and I don’t know


9/30/16 – Antonio Gonzalez, 41, Cap Construction, Cedar Hills, UT • 10/5/16 – William Bradford (Brad) Hargis, 28, SDT Contractors, Gates, TN 10/7/16 – Yongwhan Kim, 20, HADCO Construction, Lehi, UT • 10/8/16 – Benjamin Bartle, 28, Agassiz Drain Tile, Buxton, ND

DEATH BY TRENCH

by Marcia Gruver Doyle

Celebrating Jasmine Garcia’s high school graduation in May 2015 were Jimena, Alfredo, Jasmine and Jesus Garcia. Alfredo Garcia died in a trench collapse in November of that year.


how he did it,” says Garcia, who graduated this spring from Michigan State with a degree in electrical engi-neering. Compounding the family’s grief, a few months after Alfredo’s death, his daughter Jasmine suffered brain damage. “We’re in a kind of limbo,” Garcia says. “It feels like we’re in between places, not know-ing what to do. Dad was the one who set the goals for us.”

Garcia says Alfredo’s construction friends tell him these tragedies hap-pen too often. “But it shouldn’t have happened to Dad, because he was the safest guy on the work site,” he says.

Executives at Dan’s Excavating could not be reached for comment.

“They weren’t trained properly”With the on-screen name of “Dirt-Dude,” 25-year-old Zachary David Hess regularly took Snapchat videos of the holes he dug for JK Excavating & Utilities, Mason, Ohio.

Including the one that took his life.Three days after Christmas 2017, it

took an estimated 150 first respond-ers 11 hours to recover Hess’s body from a 25-foot hole in a Cincinnati suburb. His mother, Cindy Hess, is now on a mission to discover what led to his death.

“In my job, I figure out problems,” says the pharmaceutical executive. “I knew nothing about construction. I had to understand what was wrong in order to understand what was sup-posed to happen. I need to under-stand, because my son died.”

In January, she completed a 5-hour online excavation and trenching competent-person course. She’s vis-ited the local OSHA office, bringing pictures of her son. “I wanted them to know who he was, that he wasn’t a number,” she says. And she told her story at an OSHA trench safety seminar in Cincinnati in April. This has led to further requests for her to speak at construction company and agency meetings.

Hess says the circumstances sur-

rounding her son’s death were “a perfect storm.” Zach and a co-worker were alone performing a sewer tap, following up on work that began before Christmas when crews were unable to locate the utility. The problems continued from there, she says: The soil was unstable; the sewer tap was 2 feet away from the house instead of the usual 5 feet; there was water in the hole; the spoil piles were on the edge of the trench, and there was no ladder. A trench box was available, but it was too small and it wasn’t used.

Zach and his co-worker took turns digging out the trench. Zach, who Hess says had little experience with deep trenches, called up to his co-worker: “It’s got me in the right leg,” according to Hess. (The official OSHA report was still pending as of press time.)

Instead of immediately calling 911, Hess says, the co-worker tried to save Zach. He climbed out of the hole and got on an excavator, apparently in an effort to dig Zach out. The trench was steadily collapsing, and Zach be-came trapped up to his chest. Finally, his co-worker called JK Excavating’s office and asked them to call 911. “He was buried up to his neck by the time the first responders got to the scene,” Hess says.

She waited through a bitterly cold

night for the responders to recover her son’s body. “I couldn’t leave until he was out of the hole,” she says.

Hess has no illusions that the OSHA investigation, when it comes, will an-swer all her questions. “There are still so many unknowns,” she says.

As she reviews her son’s death, she focuses on the lack of training for both Zack and his co-worker. “It should be drilled into everyone’s head that the first thing you do is call 911,” she says. “I like Jerry,” she adds, refer-ring to her son’s employer, Jerry Koller Jr., “but they weren’t trained properly.” Koller declined to comment.

“What were they blocking out?”OSHA can take six months to release its investigation reports to families and even more time if the incident is complicated. Often, those reports come with redacted information. “A lot of things were blocked out,” Spencer says, especially informa-tion relating to the police report. “I wanted to know: what were they blocking out?”

She asked the Alliance, Nebraska, Police Department for its report. “We hit a brick wall.” She then went to regional authorities, wrote the state attorney general and requested mate-rials through the Freedom of Infor-mation Act. Everyone said no, citing a Nebraska statute.

Spencer’s experience prompted a Lincoln, Nebraska-based organiza-tion to address the lack of transpar-ency. “There was a law in Nebraska that a family could be denied a copy of law enforcement records,” says Tonya Ford, executive director of the United Support and Memorial for Workplace Fatalities.

The organization lobbied to amend the law so victims’ families could see these records. “The senators were amazed that it was even an issue,” Ford says. The amendment was signed by Nebraska Gov. Pete Rick-etts on April 11. “It may be something small, but it’s important,” Ford says.


10/24/16 – Kris Robert Corley, 53, Thompson Grading, Waco, GA • 10/25/16 – Kelvin (Chuck) Mattocks, 53, Atlantic Drain Service, Bellingham, MA


DEATH BY TRENCH

Zack Hess


“There is nothing we could do”Spencer, Garcia and Hess are in dif-ferent places after the deaths of their loved ones.

Garcia says he took his father’s case to five different law firms in Michigan. All five rejected it. “The protections granted to companies in Michigan are so extensive that unless we were able to prove it was done on purpose or if there was [another] contractor on the jobsite, there is nothing we could do,” he says.

Lacking the financial means to pur-sue the case, Garcia adds, “Since the statute of limitations has past, we are left without any more legal recourse that I know of.”

Spencer and Hess still talk to Shaun Houchin and Jerry Koller, the presi-dents of the construction firms where their husband and son worked. Spen-cer filed a wrongful death complaint against three firms in July 2017. Hess says Koller knows she intends to file a suit as soon as OSHA completes its investigation. And, “I’ve asked the Warren County prosecutor to look into this as soon as the OSHA report is issued,” she says.

Hess also has a longer-term mis-sion: to see Ohio pass a law modeled after Massachusetts’ 2009 “Jackie’s Law,” enacted after a 4-year-old died in an unsecured trench that collapsed in her family’s backyard. Under Jackie’s Law, among other things, contractors are required to get a per-mit from the local licensing authority before digging a trench. This permit details the trench location and antici-pated dates of opening and closing the trench.

Spencer’s suit points out the poten-tial liability of all contractors who are on site when a trench collapse occurs.

Because of workers’ compensation laws, a key to Spencer’s case will be the two co-defendants named in the suit in addition to Clau-Chin Con-struction, Jimmy’s employer. These are Larry Kessler Construction, which dug the trench, and Tony Mendes Ex-

cavating, which rented the backhoe to Larry Kessler Construction.

“The OSHA investigation said that the backhoe was a contributing factor to the cave-in,” Spencer says. “Larry was on the backhoe.”

OSHA fined excavating subcon-tractor Larry Kessler Construction $16,800, citing serious violations. Clau-Chin is currently paying a $24,800 OSHA penalty.

Spencer’s complaint alleges Kessler is a primary culprit in the incident. Kessler operated the backhoe on the job, and according to the complaint, “directed the actions, activities and performance of acts by Jimmy.” The complaint also states that “Kessler never considered use of or need for any form of protective system in the trench,” and that “Kessler admitted that he knew that OSHA regulated construction means and methods and

admitted that he violated the OSHA standards in this particular situation.”

“Jimmy Spencer was not my em-ployee,” Larry Kessler said when con-tacted by Equipment World. “I have no employees. I was cited because they’re OSHA and they can do what they want.”

In addition, the complaint says Tony Mendes of Tony Mendes Ex-cavating, which rented the backhoe to Kessler, “failed to supervise the use and operation of his excavating equipment” and did not assure that Kessler understood and followed trench safety procedures.

For the families, answers mat-ter just as much as jury awards in working through these deaths. And they know their efforts won’t result in their fiercest wish: to restore their families.

“All of it sucks,” Hess says.


10/25/16 – Robert Joseph Higgins, 47, Atlantic Drain Service, Bellingham, MA • 12/15/16 – Donald (D. J.) Meyer, 33, Arrow Plumbing, Blue Springs, MO


DEATH BY TRENCH

Web extras on equipmentworld.com/deathbytrench:• Video: Cindy Hess’s presentation at the OSHA trenching and excavation risk prevention workshop this April.• Zach Hess’s Snapchat video of the trench in which he died.

Seated in the front row, Cindy Hess prepares to speak at an OSHA meeting in April. “I refuse to let my son be a statistic,” she told the audience. “There should be no fa-talities for accidental cave-ins. This is never an accident. It is 100-percent preventable.”



Jay Herzmark had never tried to get anyone arrested before.

But when the retired indus-trial hygienist from the University of Washington’s Environmental Health and Safety Department found out a worker had died in a trench col-lapse in his county, he felt some-thing had to be done.

“No one should die in a trench,” he says.

Herzmark was no stranger to worker issues, having been active in the Washington Federation of State Employees union and a for-mer director of the Seattle Chapter

of the National Council for Occupa-tional Safety and Health.

The trench collapse, however, launched his activism to a new level.

The Washington State Depart-ment of Labor & Industries (L&I) had cited Alki Construction owner Phillip Numrich with a willful viola-

DEATH BY TRENCH

Expect more criminal charges in trench deaths

1/5/17– Joshua Shane Price, 24, Hardy Plumbing, Evans, GA • 2/13/17 – Konrad Tucharski, 40, City of Chicago, Department of Water Management


A distraught co-worker is assisted by firefighters following a trench col-lapse January 26, 2016, in Seattle that killed Harold Felton. Felton’s employer, Alki Construction owner Phillip Num-rich, has been charged with second-degree manslaughter, which is the first felony charge in Washington State in a worker’s death.

Alki Construction failed to properly shore this trench that collapsed on Harold Felton in Seattle, according to the Washing-ton State Department of Labor & Industries.

by Don McLoud

Phot

o: G

reg

Gilb

ert /

The

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tle Ti

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tion in the death of his employee Harold Felton and fined him $51,500. The case might have ended there, but Herzmark’s efforts led to the first felony charge in Washington for a worker’s death, according to L&I.

The second-degree manslaughter charge, filed by the King County Prosecutor’s Office on January 8, 2018, is one of six trench-collapse deaths since 2015 in which a local prosecutor has filed charges. In two of those cases, one in New York City and another in Santa Clara County, California, three people were sen-tenced to a year or more in prison.

Buoyed by the recent convictions and filing of criminal charges, some workers’ advocates hope to see more such local prosecutions around the country. They believe the maximum penalty under federal occupational safety laws for a worker’s death, a misdemeanor that carries up to six months in jail, is too lax to deter

worksite negligence. They also say the Occupational Safety and Health Administration doesn’t refer enough cases to the U.S. Justice Department for criminal prosecution.

“The (OSHA) cases aren’t referred over to the Justice Department very often, and even when they are, the Justice Department doesn’t see it necessarily as the best case to spend the resources on,” says Katie Tracy, policy analyst for the Center for Pro-gressive Reform.

But local prosecutors don’t face such constraints.

“At the local level, prosecutors can bring criminal charges into situations where federal OSHA couldn’t,” she says. “And they can also charge as a felony where federal OSHA can’t.”

‘You’ve got to do more than that’Sometime shortly after 10:35 a.m. January 26, 2016, Harold Felton en-tered a trench he and other workers


DEATH BY TRENCH

2/22/17 – Adam J. Skokut Jr., 18, Adam Skokut Sr., Smithton, PA


“– Jay Herzmark, who led a grassroots effort that resulted in Washington’s

first felony charge in a worker’s death, filed against Alki Construc-tion owner Phillip Numrich after a trench collapse in 2016 killed a worker in Seattle.

I thought, ‘You’vegot to do more than that.’…That’s probablymanslaughter.”

Steven Smith was working on a nearby masonry project on October 21, 2016, when he saw a water main collapse that sent torrents of water into a collapsed trench and down Dartmouth Street in Boston. The photo shows him trying to assist at the scene. He connected a chain to a street plate that covered part of the trench and called for a backhoe operator to help lift the plate. Smith has since filed a lawsuit against Atlantic Drain Service seeking $200,000 to recoup costs for hos-pital expenses and therapy following the incident in which two workers trapped in the trench died.Photo: Mark Garfinkel/Boston Herald

EW0618_Trench Legal.indd 34 5/25/18 1:28 PM


for Alki Construction had dug beside a house in Seattle, Washington.

The trench was 8 to 10 feet deep, 6 feet long and 21 inches wide, accord-ing to L&I.

About 10 minutes later, Felton’s co-worker, Maximillion Henry, heard him yell, according to a Seattle Police Department report. He ran to the trench but could not see Felton. The co-worker jumped into the trench and began digging. He called the company owner, Phillip Numrich, who had gone to buy lunch. Numrich told the worker to call 911. When Numrich returned to the site soon af-ter, both men tried to dig out Felton.

They eventually reached Felton’s back and heard “coughing, spitting and muffled breathing,” according to the report. The Seattle Fire De-partment arrived, ordered both men out of the trench and began rescue efforts.

Felton’s body was found under-neath the dirt about 7 feet down, crouched with his arms bent toward his diaphragm, the report said. It took hours to recover the body. The 36-year-old worker left behind a wife and 4-month-old daughter.

“He must have fallen in the hole,” Numrich later told a police officer, according to the police report. “That’s the only thing that makes sense. He knew not to go in there. He knew to stay 2 feet back. Those are the rules.”

The police department ruled the collapse an accident and turned the case over to L&I.

L&I investigators determined that the trench was dug in Type C soil, the least stable. It was not properly shored, had no ladder and had been left open for 10 days during rainy weather. Felton and other work-ers were using vibrating tools and

a trenchless pipe extension process that loosened the soil in and around the trench.

Felton was attaching the new line at the house, using a Sawzall vibrat-ing hand tool, when the trench col-lapsed, according to Mark Joseph, an L&I certified safety and health officer.

“Numrich did not intervene to stop Felton from using the Sawzall,” Joseph said in a probable cause state-ment. “Instead, Numrich left the job-

site to buy lunch for all three so that they could eat after Felton and Henry finished attaching the sewer.”

He also determined the company had used an aluminum hydraulic shoring system, but had not installed it properly and had only used two shores. The trench should have had four shores on the long end of the trench, and it should have had end shoring on the two short sides at the end of the trench.

“As a result, the shoring in place was wholly inadequate and, based on Numrich’s status as the ‘competent person’ and his statement during his interview that he was aware of trench safety issues, he should have known that the shoring was inadequate,” Joseph stated.

On July 21, 2016, L&I cited Alki Construction with eight violations, two of which were “willful,” the most serious level. The willful violations were for not having the trench prop-erly shored and because Numrich, who was the designated competent person on the jobsite, did not ensure that Felton stayed out of the trench that was exposed to possible cave-ins.

On September 1, 2016, L&I an-nounced the $51,500 in fines. The fines were reduced two months later to $25,750.

“I thought, ‘You’ve got to do more than that,’” Herzmark recalls. “That’s probably manslaughter.”

So Herzmark reached out to the nonprofit Center for Progressive Reform, which had been looking into criminal cases brought by local prosecutors for worker fatalities. The organization, based in Washington, D.C., had created a manual to help local activists initiate grassroots efforts to seek such prosecutions. Using the manual as his guide,

DEATH BY TRENCH

2/28/17 – Valnei Antonio Ornellas Nascimento, 52, Bahia Construction, Montgomery Village, MD


“ – Katie Tracy, policy analyst for the Center for Progressive Reform.

In the past, there’s been this hang-up on seeing workplace fatalities as crimes. People just see them as these unfortunate accidents.”

Seattle firefighters respond Janu-ary 26, 2016, to a trench collapse that killed Alki Construction worker Harold Felton. It took several hours to recover Felton, who was found 80 inches down in this trench, crouched with his arms bent toward his dia-phragm, according to a police report. The 36-year-old worker left behind a wife and 4-month-old daughter.



Herzmark filed a petition with 120 sig-natures from labor leaders, attorneys, political leaders and workplace safety professionals with the King County Prosecutor’s Office calling for criminal charges against Numrich.

Herzmark wasn’t sure what would happen next, if anything.

“I’d never done this before,” Her-zmark says. “I knew it was really difficult. I’ve been working in this field for 30 years, and I know that hardly anyone ever goes to jail.”

A little over a year after he submitted the petition, the King County Pros-ecutor’s Office made state history by announcing it had filed a felony man-slaughter charge against Numrich.

“We alleged that the defendant’s criminal negligence caused Harold Felton’s death,” said Mindy Young, senior deputy prosecuting attorney. “The evidence shows an extraordinary level of negligence surrounding this dangerous worksite.”

After Numrich was charged, he was released on personal recognizance. He currently awaits trial. Attempts to reach Numrich for comment were unsuc-cessful.

‘Penalties higher for killing fishthan for workers’Criminal prosecution is rare for work-place deaths, and it’s even rarer for someone to be sentenced to prison.

Between 1970 and 2016, about 400,000 workers died on the job, but only 93 of those deaths resulted in criminal prosecution under the federal Occupational Safety & Health Act, according to the 2017 “Death on the Job” report by the AFL-CIO.

Total jail time for all 93 cases com-bined was a little over nine years.

Compare that to federal environ-mental protection laws, where in fiscal year 2016 alone, 184 criminal cases were prosecuted with total sentencing of 93 years in prison, ac-cording to the report.

Fines for workplace deaths are also low when compared to environmental violations.

Jordan Barab, former OSHA dep-uty director who writes the “Con-fined Space” newsletter on work-place safety and labor issues, says workplace deaths typically result in OSHA fines in the tens of thousands; whereas, EPA fines can rise to mil-lions of dollars.

According to the AFL-CIO’s 2017 “Death on the Job” report, in fiscal year 2016, the average OSHA penalty for a worker fatality was $14,767. For a will-ful violation, the OSHA fine averaged $41,592.

In contrast, the average fine and ordered restitution for the 184 EPA criminal cases in fiscal year 2016 was $1,125,000, according to report data.

“If you’re planning to die on the job, make sure you take a bunch of fish with you, because the penalties will be much higher for killing fish than they would be for killing workers,” Barab says of the discrepancy.

Ignoring repeated warningsNo firm data exist on the number of criminal prosecutions on a federal, state and local level for trench-collapse death cases. However, since 2015, charges have been filed in at least eight cases in which workers died in a trench collapse, according to a Center for Progressive Reform database and Equipment World research. Local prosecutors filed all but two of those eight cases; the U.S. Justice Department filed the other two after referral by OSHA.

One of the most publicized recent criminal prosecutions of a trench-collapse death – and one most often cited by workers’ advocates – oc-curred in New York City in 2016.

On April 6, 2015, an inspector at a worksite in New York City’s Meat Packing District had several times warned the site’s supervisor and

DEATH BY TRENCH

3/9/17 – David Allen Williams, 36, Stark Contracting, San Antonio, TX • 3/20/17 – Harold Foote, 58, Foote Dirtworks, Middleton, ID


More criminal charges

Charges have been filed and sentences issued in five other trench-collapse deaths since 2015:

• 2015: Richard Liu, owner of U.S.-Sino Investment, and the company’s project manager, Dan Luo, 2 years prison, Santa Clara County, Cali-fornia. Victim: Raul Zapata Mercado, died in 2012.

• 2017: Abraham Zafrani, unlicensed contractor and

project manager, 6 months jail, 18 months supervised release, Ventura County, Cali-fornia. Victim: DeJesus Mejia, died in 2011.

• 2018: Wayne A. George, plumbing company owner, 2 years probation, U.S. District Court, Pennsylvania. Victim: Jacob Casher, died in 2015.

• 2018: Susquehanna Supply Company of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, $250,000 fine, plea agreement, U.S. District Court, Pennsylvania. Victim: Richard Thomas Gold III, died in 2015.

• 2018: Keith Bednar, presi-dent of Bednar Landscape Services, and Corporate Secretary Christopher C. Liberatore, applied to pretrial intervention program to dis-miss charges after comple-tion, company ordered to pay $50,000 to be split among victims’ children, Morris County, New Jersey. Victims: Oscar Portillo and Selvin Zelaya; died in 2014.


foreman to keep workers out of an unprotected trench. Not long after the last warning, the trench collapsed on Carlos Moncayo, a 22-year-old undocumented work-er from Ecuador. He was crushed to death.

At trial in 2016, the foreman for the excavation subcontractor, Wilmer Cueva, was sentenced to one to three years for felony criminally neg-ligent homicide and misdemeanor reckless endangerment.

After Cueva’s conviction, site supervisor Alfonso Prestia accepted a plea deal of probation and com-munity service for criminal negligent homicide.

Prestia’s employer, Harco Con-struction, ended up paying $10,000, the maximum fine the court could impose, after being convicted of second-degree manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and reckless endangerment in June 2016. The company was also fined $140,000 by OSHA.

Cueva’s employer, Sky Materials,

reached a plea deal to pay a $10,000 fine on the manslaughter charge. OSHA also fined Sky $100,000.

On the second anniversary of Moncayo’s death, April 6, 2017, Dis-trict Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. called for tougher criminal penalties against companies convicted in worker death cases.

“A $10,000 fine,” he said, “is but a rounding error on a multi-million-dollar building contract.”

Flooded trench leads tocharges in BostonAnother trench-collapse case that has caught the attention of work-ers’ advocates occurred in Boston in 2016.

Kevin Otto and his company, At-lantic Drain Service, were charged in 2017 with two counts of manslaugh-ter, one count of misleading investi-gators and six counts of concealing a record. They also face nearly $1.5 million in fines from OSHA for 18 violations, including repeat violations.

The charges followed the deaths

of Robert Higgins, 47, and Kelvin Mattocks, 53, who were working in an unprotected, 12-foot-deep trench when dirt caved-in, covering them to the waist, then the water main at a fire hydrant burst, according to the Suffolk County Prosecutor’s Office.

“The trench was flooded in seconds, and neither Higgins nor Mattocks was able to escape,” the prosecutor’s office said. “Both died at the scene, and it would be almost six hours before their bodies were recovered.”

The prosecutor’s office also charged the company with conceal-ing a record and misleading an investigator. The office said Atlantic Drain provided OSHA with doctored records to indicate the two workers had been trained in trench safety and had proper safety equipment.

Otto and Atlantic Drain have pleaded not guilty and filed to dismiss the charges, arguing that in-sufficient evidence was provided to the grand jury to determine probable cause. A judge rejected the request for dismissal of the charges in April.

Veronica White, attorney for Otto and Atlantic Drain, said the cause of the trench collapse was a hydrant pipe failure that allowed water to rush into the trench. Her expert wit-ness, Dr. Marthinus C. Van Shoor, has submitted a signed affidavit saying that shoring can’t protect a trench against a rapid inrush of water.

“The collapse of the trench was an unfortunate accident,” White said.“…There was no criminal intent.”

She said the charges were the result of public pressure on the Prosecutor’s Office, and the OSHA investigation was not completed before the grand jury was presented evidence. “Once all evidence is made available, through request or order of the court, we expect to move forward in determining lawful avenues to dismiss this case,” White said.


DEATH BY TRENCH

4/15/17 – Abelardo Rodriguez, 47, Urban Concrete Contractors, San Antonio, TX


Suffolk County District Attorney Dan Conley, right, announces manslaughter charges in the 2016 deaths of two men in a trench collapse in Boston. With Conley are Assistant D.A. Michael V. Glennon, left, who responded to the scene, and Assistant D.A. Lynn Fei-genbaum of the Senior Trial Unit, who led the grand jury investigation that culminated in criminal charges against Atlantic Drain Service and its owner, Kevin Otto.


The trial is scheduled for Janu-ary 2019, according to the pros-ecutor’s office.

Setting a precedent?“In the past, there’s been this hang-up on seeing workplace fatalities as crimes. People just see them as these unfortunate accidents,” says Tracy, with the Center for Progres-sive Reform. “The police don’t even investigate a lot of these as crimes. They just call OSHA. OSHA does an inspection and issues a fine. It’s literally considered an ac-cident in almost every single case.”

With Herzmark’s efforts in Seattle and convictions in New York City and a few other areas around the country, Tracy expects local pros-ecutors’ perceptions will gradually change about seeking criminal charges in workplace fatalities.

“I’ve talked to other prosecutors,” she says, “and they’re like, ‘Well, where’s an example of a case? Has this happened before successfully?’

“Now we have concrete examples of successful prosecutions that they can look at, and they’re not neces-sarily afraid to try something new.”

Jordan Barab, former federal OSHA deputy director, also be-lieves more trench-collapse death cases should be criminally pros-ecuted, and he believes all trench-collapse cases should be consid-ered willful violations by OSHA.

“These are well-known hazards, and the solutions for preventing workers from getting hurt or killed in trenches are also well-known,” he says. “It should be the respon-sibility of any business owner who has a business involving digging trenches to understand how to abate those hazards and to do it.”

Herzmark says he plans to urge state regulators to refer more work-place death cases to police and pros-ecutors for criminal investigation. Until jail time becomes a real pos-sibility, he says, “people are going to

continue to do what they do.”He says he’s also ready should

another case deserving criminal prosecution catch his attention.

“If I could find another case, I would do it,” he says. “I would be all over it.”


DEATH BY TRENCH

5/16/17 – Christopher S. Hewey, 37, JP Trucking & Excavating, Bellows Falls, VT


Average initial fine for a trench death: $50,290

The Atlantic Drain Service fine of nearly $1.5 million is an extreme outlier.Looking at available records during 2016-2017, Equipment World found that

the average initial fine for a trench death was $50,290.OSHA’s most severe charge is what it calls a “willful” violation, meaning the

employer demonstrated intentional disregard or indifference to employee safety. Willful violations were issued in 13 incidents representing 15 fatalities in the past two years (since the investigations have not been completed on all fatalities, this does not include all incidents).

Initial OSHA fines in 13 incidents with willful violations totaled $2.95 million. That number, however, is cut by more than half when the Atlantic Drain outlier is removed. For the 12 remaining incidents with willful violations, the average initial fine was $122,976.

In addition to Atlantic Drain, three other companies received high initial fines for trench safety infractions during this time period. Arrow Plumbing, Blue Springs, Missouri, received a $294,059 initial fine for the death of David (D.J) Meyer, age 33. And high fines aren’t just the result of a fatality: Kamphuis Pipeline, Grand Rapids, Michigan, received a $187,653 fine for exposing its employees to trench cave-ins. Jax Utilities Management, Jacksonville, Florida, received an initial $271,606 fine after an investigation of an employee injury in a trench. That fine has been reduced to $135,836.

OSHA trench fatality fines, 2016-2017

Top initial fine $1,475,813 Atlantic Drain Service,Bellingham, Massachusetts

Average initial fine minusAtlantic Drain incident(44 incidents)

$50,290

Average pending/closed fineminus Atlantic Drain incident(34 incidents)

$25,012

Initial fines

Below $5,000* 7 14%

$5,000 - $20,000 10 22%

$20,000 - $40,000 9 20%

$40,000 - $100,000 11 24%

More than $100,000 9 20%

*Includes fatalities where no fine was issued. Note: Based on fines from 44 incidents; double fatalities had combined fines; includes two instances in which two companies were fined for one incident

Web extraequipmentworld.com/deathbytrench

Multi-million-dollar jury awardspossible in trench-collapse suits



“Not a hell of a lot of peoplesurvive it.”

That’s the assessment of Fire Chief Cecil “Buddy” Martinette Jr. of Wilmington, North Carolina, the author of the textbook “Trench Res-cue” and a frequently cited expert

on rescue training.“A majority of people out there

who install underground utilities do it according to the book,” Martinette says. “They are very safe, and they

care about their employees. But that’s not every case.”

If a worker is completely buried, it’s almost always lethal, Martinette says. “If the weight of the soil doesn’t crush you, then you’ll certainly suf-focate in three or four minutes.”

5/22/17 – Vaughn L. Kopetsky, 60, R. A. Monzo Construction, Latrobe, PA • 5/24/17 – Edward M. Sinnott, 59, Don Antorino Sewer & Drain, Port Jefferson Station, NY • 7/12/17 – Jose Lozano, 50, Sagres Construction, Lorton, VA


First on THE sceneTrench rescues are methodical, labor

intensive and often unsuccessfulby Joy Powell and Marcia Gruver Doyle

EW0618_Trench First Responders.indd 44 5/25/18 1:40 PM


The only chance after that point: if a victim has somehow found an air pocket, either in the dirt or a pipe. That is why first responders keep on working, even as the min-utes and hours tick on.

“I tell our students to expect the worst and hope for the best,” says Rick Gregg, group supervisor with the Alabama Fire College.

Every trench rescue is differ-ent, from the soil conditions to the likelihood of saving someone, says Ulie Seal, fire chief in Blooming-ton, a Minneapolis suburb. He’s a founding member and former coordinator of Minnesota Urban Search and Rescue Task Force 1, composed of five Minne-sota fire departments with firefighters and paramed-ics from surrounding metro agencies, as well as physicians.

“It really depends on the severity of the collapse, the kind of collapse, how deep the person was, and whether or not we can provide a protected place for them fairly quickly when we get there,” Seal says of the chance for survival. “There’s just a whole lot of ‘ifs’ there.”

With situations varying, there are steps and approaches that firefight-ers might not know unless they’ve received specialized training.

“There’s a lot to this,” says Rich Alfes, co-owner and director of Spec Rescue International, a Virgin-ia firm that provides consulting, ed-ucation and training for specialized rescues. A retired shift commander for the Naugatuck Fire Department in Connecticut, he trains emergency

response technicians and military troops in special operations and is on a federal rescue team.

Alfes points out, for example, that even when they have the proper equipment, firefighters are advised not to enter trenches deeper than 15 feet. That’s largely because the primary protective systems they use – pneumatic struts, or shores – are not rated for anything deeper than 20 feet, he says.

Trench rescue is an advanced fire-fighter course, says Gregg. “Trench collapses for firefighters are low

frequency, but high risk. You may not have one in three years, but when you do, you have to be ready for it. It’s not a quick pro-cess to get someone out.”

It takes eight to 12 re-sponders to answer a 911 trench rescue, Gregg says. “If you’re a four-man en-gine company, there’s not

a lot you can do by yourself,” he says. Not every fire department has people trained in trench rescue, and departments with limited resources rely on mutual-aid agreements for such help. Trench rescues can in-volve dozens of responders.

Ideally, emergency dispatchers will have a list of questions to ask the caller: How many are in the hole? How deep is the trench? Where can they access the site? Are there any obstacles? Gregg tells of one con-struction site so muddy the firefight-er equipment had to be winched in with a dozer. “It’s a whole lot easier when you can start calling for needed assistance en route,” he says.

Once on the scene, responders

5/22/17 – Vaughn L. Kopetsky, 60, R. A. Monzo Construction, Latrobe, PA • 5/24/17 – Edward M. Sinnott, 59, Don Antorino Sewer & Drain, Port Jefferson Station, NY • 7/12/17 – Jose Lozano, 50, Sagres Construction, Lorton, VA

DEATH BY TRENCH

First on THE scene A rescue: After working for

6-1/2 hours in March 2017, Omaha firefighters rescued 23-year-old Drew Johnson, who was buried up to his knees in a 12-foot trench, according to the Omaha World-Herald. (Reprint-ed with permission from the Omaha World-Herald.)

“A lot of people have this mistaken notion that if they get buried up to their waist they’re going to be fine. But you breathe through your diaphragm, which projects downward. You can still suffocate. ”

– Alex Roberts, president of S. A. S. Contracting and a first responder.

Rich Alfes


seek out a contractor’s com-petent person, required by OSHA to oversee excavation jobsites. “He is your initial source of information,” says Larry Phillips, director of ed-ucational services for Spec Rescue International. The competent person should also have the manufacturer’s tabulated data for all trench protection systems in use onsite.

Sometimes, no workers at the accident scene speak English. And workers have been known to leave before help arrives, likely because they are undocumented.

The worst-case scenario is not knowing where the victim is, says Alex Roberts, president of S.A.S. Contract-ing, Bethel, Connecticut, and a 30-year first respond-er. “The force of the soil could have moved his body over one way or another,” he says.

Responders look for clues – such as grease cans, ropes, water bottles – any-thing that will give them an idea where to start.

Emotions often run high during a trench collapse, with first responders en-countering upset bystanders and co-workers. For trench rescue training, the Alabama Fire College brings in actors – usu-ally other firefighters unknown to the students – to pose as distraught co-workers, among other roles.

“In construction, you have a lot of family teams, where say the dad is

operating the backhoe and the son and cousin are in the trench,” Gregg explains. “When you come on the scene, they want to jump in and help and tell us we’re not doing our job, and that they’ll do it themselves if we

won’t. We’ll act that out.”Firefighters typically lay

down plywood sheets, called ground pads. Then they use trench protection equipment to create a 12-foot safe zone in a straight trench. (Trench intersections and corners create addi-tional complications.) “Until they get all the shoring up, they can’t go down in there,” Gregg explains.

Not all fire departments have the same equipment or most up-to-date trench res-cue equipment. Gregg notes that pneumatic or hydraulic shoring is a great tool, but expensive. Students at the Alabama Fire College learn how to use screw jacks and cut-to-length timbers to help shore a trench. Responders also have found vacuum trucks to be an excellent tool to excavate dirt.

To onlookers, the pro-cess may seem slow and methodical. “But any movement of dirt can trig-ger another collapse, so responders have to be in a safe area,” Gregg says. “They’re getting to the victim as fast as they can without being a victim themselves.”

Vibrations from passing trains, running equipment

and passing vehicles on a nearby road can prompt a secondary col-lapse; so can the rotor wash from an overhead helicopter when news crews get too close.

Responders must be well versed in


9/11/17 – Tha Leng, 59, Flowerwood Nursery, Mobile, AL • 10/10/17 – Christopher James Godfrey, 30, Sunstar LLC, Wyoming, MI


DEATH BY TRENCH

“ I tell our students to expect the worst and hope for the best.”– Rick Gregg, group supervisor with the Alabama Fire College.

Firefighters train in a concrete trench at the Alabama Fire College.



DEATH BY TRENCH

9/11/17 – Tha Leng, 59, Flowerwood Nursery, Mobile, AL • 10/10/17 – Christopher James Godfrey, 30, Sunstar LLC, Wyoming, MI

– Rick Gregg, group supervisor with the Alabama Fire College.

dirt and assume they’re dealing with unstable soil. They refer to the first 2 feet of a trench as the “lip,” the bot-tom 2 feet as the “toe,” and the soil in between as the “belly.”

“The worst is mud, and dealing with a busted water line,” Gregg says. “You have to get the water shut off.”

The fire college practices with a 180-pound dummy made of used fire hoses. “If you find a victim’s feet, you need to get to his upper body real quick and uncover his chest,” Gregg says. “Chest, head, nose, mouth.”

Part of training first responders can involve placing a polyethylene box containing 1 cubic foot of dirt on their chests so they feel how much it weighs, Martinette says. “Of course, in some collapses, you’re dealing with hundreds of cubic feet of soil,” he says.

“A lot of people have this mis-taken notion that if they get buried up to their waist they’re going to be fine,” Roberts says. “But you breathe through your diaphragm, which projects downward. You can still suffocate.”

“Every joint is going to become a weak spot when you get material pushing against it,” he adds. “Your legs can be twisted, and you can suffer multiple fractures. You may be permanently disabled.”

Firefighters treat survivors and prepare them for removal. But even when a victim leaves the hole still breathing, the danger’s not necessar-ily over.

One of the most serious dangers is “crush syndrome,” characterized by shock and kidney failure. Lactic acid builds in crushed muscles,

and when responders remove the weight and free the patient, toxic blood rushes to vital organs. Responders can counter this by intravenously administering saline or medicines.

Trapped people can even suffer hypothermia because 4 feet down or deeper, the dirt can be 50 to 55 degrees.

Ultimately, first responders say, most trench deaths could be pre-vented if people stopped cutting corners. A large part of the con-struction population simply “lives by luck,” Seal says.

“There’s a lot more risky behav-ior out there than the number of calls we actually get,” he says. “And many times, by the time we get calls, those people were killed fairly quickly. Nobody’s going to save them.”

10/27/17 – Tommy Smith, 42, Mitchell Plumbing, Nashville, TN

DEATH BY TRENCH

“A majority of people out there who install underground utili-ties do it according to the book. They are very safe, and they care about their employees. But that’s not every case.”

– Cecil “Buddy” Martinette, fire chief, Wilmington, North Carolina.

Until the first responders arrive…

Don’t jump in the trench, experts warn. While victims have been saved by co-workers doing that, there’s a good chance the would-be rescuers will need to be rescued themselves. And if you jump in near the victim, you could further com-pact the soil around him or her.

For victims buried no more than waist deep, place a shovel and ladder near them, says Buddy Mar-tinette. “They’ll want you to come in there and get them, but we teach rescuers to not become the second victim.”

Because trench rescue is a pro-cess, this self-shoveling can speed up extraction.

“Don’t try to pull them out until you can see the tops of their feet because you have no idea of the weight of soil and the compaction and vacuum it creates,” Martinette says. “You literally cannot get them out until you see the tops of their feet.”

To protect a victim from an addi-tional collapse, co-workers waiting for help can put shoring panels around the victim.

Other best practices: Approach straight trenches from the corners – the strongest points. And unless you know exactly where the person is, don’t use an excavator. “It compounds the problem,” says Alex Roberts. Doing so risks harming the victim with the bucket or putting extra pressure on them. “It’s mostly a hand-dig situation,” he says.

In Mankato, Minnesota, firefight-ers learn to stabilize trench collapses with the use of shoring and struts.



Tip-offs about an unsafe trench can come from anywhere.

“We usually go to those jobs because we get a complaint from an employee, calls from the public, or law enforcement sees something un-safe,” says Steve Hawkins, assistant commissioner, Tennessee OSHA. “Everybody in Tennessee OSHA is trained and authorized to stop and

conduct inspections, even if they’re just driving down the road on a Saturday.”

OSHA’s compliance officers investigate accidents, inspect work and levy fines and penalties for violations. The process is gener-ally the same for all inspections: an

opening conference to explain why they are inspecting the worksite, a walk-around to identify hazards, and a closing conference to discuss the findings.

“The first thing we do is identify ourselves and present credentials,” says Hawkins. “Then we determine if there is a competent person pres-ent as defined in the standard. The

DEATH BY TRENCH

What to expect when an OSHA compliance oFFicer

investigates

OSHA inspectors can immediately stop work and tell workers to get out of an unsafe trench.

by Tom Jackson

11/7/17 – Matthew Holladay, 31, All Power Construction, Huntsville, AL


EW0618_Trench_Osha.indd 51 5/25/18 1:43 PM

way we determine if they are com-petent is that we look at the work they’re doing and ask them about their knowledge.”

An OSHA competent person is defined as “one who is capable of identifying existing and predict-able hazards in the surroundings or working conditions which are unsanitary, hazardous or dangerous to employees, and who has autho-rization to take prompt corrective measures to eliminate them.”

The site’s competent person should be prepared to discuss OSHA regulations, how they determined the soil type and how they deter-mined what protection was needed, says Hawkins. The OSHA compli-ance officer will also take a soil sample with a small tool called a pentrometer, which quickly identi-fies soil type.

Hawkins stresses that having the authority to make changes is as important as technical knowledge. If the person does not have the au-thority, he or she is not considered competent.

Next comes an examination of the jobsite. “Are the spoil piles 2 feet from the edge of the trench? Are there ladders in the trench if it’s more than 4 feet deep? At 5 feet or deeper, you’re looking for protection like shoring or shielding,” Hawkins says. “And if the excavation is deeper than 20 feet, you’re looking for a plan approved by a registered, professional engineer for how you’re

going to protect that excavation.” Inspectors also check to make sure nobody is ever more than 25 feet from the ladders. Hawkins calls this the “2, 4, 5, 20 and 25” inspection.

“We also point out that the ladder is simply there as a safe way to get in and out of the excavation,” says Hawkins. “Some people view a lad-der as an emergency escape route. It is not that. A trench collapses in seconds. By the time you’ve thought about running up the ladder, you’re covered up.”

If a compliance officer sees some-thing unsafe, he or she will immedi-ately ask the competent person to get people out of a trench. If the employ-er or supervisor refuses, a stop-work order is issued and, if necessary, law enforcement is called. “This rarely happens,” Hawkins says. “Most of the time the employer will cooperate.”

Contractors’ most frequent ex-cuse for not following trench safety procedures? “We were only going to be down there for a second. We only needed to retrieve a tool,” says Clyde Payne, who retired in 2014 as OSHA’s area director in Jackson, Mississippi. That excuse gets no one off the hook. “A trench can collapse faster than you can flip a coin and catch it,” Payne says.

“I didn’t know” is the other excuse Payne heard in the field frequently, but “it’s hard to put credence in that,” he says. “If you go to any of the construction association meet-ings, they provide education and

assistance on trench safety, and they frequently have OSHA guest speak-ers give presentations at those meet-ings as well.”

Much of the negligence is learned behavior, says Payne. “Your em-ployees are going to do what you expect them to do. If they know you want them to work safely, they will. If they know what you care about most is getting the job done, and nothing else, then safety is not going to be a priority.”

The construction industry does de-serve credit for improving the safety of trenching and excavation sites over the last 20 years, Payne says. “The industry has really stepped up and recognized this hazard. And you see more municipalities and large employers that are cognizant about hiring responsible contractors and making sure that they work safely. That saves lives in the long run.”


11/19/17 – Kurt Peiscopgrau, 60, Don Antorino Sewer & Drain, Port Jefferson Station, NY


DEATH BY TRENCH

Web extrasequipmentworld.com/deathbytrench

• How to stay compliant• OSHA renews emphasis on preventing trench deaths• Nearly half of the states have own

safety programs• OSHA fines: The price you’ll pay• If you’re on the jobsite, you could be liable• OSHA can help with consultation and training• OSHA’s Office of Partnerships and Recognition

“– Clyde Payne, retired OSHA area director in Jackson, Mississippi

Your employees are going to do what you expect them to do. If they know you want them to work safely, they will. If they know what you care about most is getting the job done, and nothing else, then safety is not going to be a priority. ”

EW0618_Trench_Osha.indd 52 5/25/18 1:43 PM


DEATH BY TRENCH

Equipment World would like to thank Oregon OSHA for this graphic idea.

7 ways to digan early grave

1 Machine positioned at edge of trench.

Observer standing on trench edge

No means for entering or exiting the trench.

Trench deeper than 5 feet.

No protection in trench

No hard hat.

Spoil piles on edge, instead of 2 feet back.2 5

3

4

6

7

EW0618_Early Grave.indd 53 5/25/18 1:45 PM


Trenchprotection:big mission, big business

In addition to protecting workers, trench protection systems need to give crews enough room to do their job.

EW0618_Trench Protection.indd 54 5/25/18 1:47 PM

Sloping. Shoring. Shielding. The basics of trench protection pre-date OSHA’s 1989 regulation,

yet many contractors still act like they’re a mystery.

“You read trench collapse investi-gations, and it always starts with ‘we didn’t know,’” says Mitch Post, train-ing and technical services manager for Mabey, a trench shoring manu-facturer based in Elkridge, Maryland. “No one goes into work thinking, ‘Hey, I’m going to do something that gets someone killed today.’”

“Our biggest competitor is noncom-pliance,” says Dave Nicoli with dis-tributor D. P. Nicoli, Tualatin, Oregon. “They think, ‘This will just take a minute.’ They think they don’t want to waste time putting a trench box in.”

The 5-foot mythThere’s also a misconception that contractors don’t have to worry about any trench less than 5 feet deep. “OSHA leaves it up to the judgment of the competent person,” Post says. “If you get someone hurt or killed in a 3-foot trench, you’re every bit as liable as if that trench was 30 feet deep.”

“People become complacent be-cause they think the 5-foot level is the safety level, and it’s absolutely not,” says Alex Roberts, president of S.A.S. Contracting, Bethel, Con-necticut.

“If that trench is only 4 feet deep and you bend over to make your connection, the trench can still col-lapse on top of you.”

“You have to be competent to un-derstand the conditions out there,”

says Victor Serrambana Jr., presi-dent of VMS Construction, Vernon, Connecticut. “It really is an experi-ence and training thing.”

Serrambana trains his crews to stop digging if the excavator bucket starts bringing up a different type of soil. “Just keep looking at what’s happening with the soil,” he says.

“It will tell you pretty quickly if it’s changing. Many times it’s because you’re coming into a previous exca-vation, and it may be an unmarked utility. It also may call for a differ-ent style of shoring.”

What’s underneath“Before you open up a trench, nature is in balance. As soon as you cut into it, the earth wants to heal itself by caving in,” explains David Dow, senior vice president with TrenchSafety and Supply, an Under-ground Safety Equipment company based in Memphis, Tennessee. “Ex-cept in stable rock – which is almost nonexistent – every trench is going to collapse at some point, sometimes quickly, sometimes not.”

OSHA regs classify soils as stable rock, then Type A, B and C, in de-scending order of stability. “The best way to remember C is ‘crap,’” Dow states bluntly.

Complicating matters is the fact that what’s underneath can be a mix of soil types.

Which is the reason why no trench, no matter how routine to a contractor, is the same. The type of soil changes, depth changes and terrain changes. Weather – especially rain – complicates things further. You need to take all of this into account when choosing a trench protection system.

You choose “Protecting your workers from a cave-in is not a matter of which system is better or worse, but which one fits your situation the best,” says


12/11/17 – Loren Richmond, 38, Scott Excavating, Waco, KY • 12/15/17 – Vicente Santoyo, 42, K-9 Construction, Orem, UT


DEATH BY TRENCH

by Marcia Gruver Doyle

The four basic types of trench protection

Trench protection measures and systems come under four basic types, which can be accom-

plished using a variety of methods and equipment.

• Sloping involves cutting back the trench walls at a prescribed angle from the floor to produce a stable slope. Slopes can also be benched in a series of steps.

• Shoring supports trench walls with a system of vertical uprights and/or sheeting and cross braces (shores). Shores put pressure on the vertical uprights and/or sheeting.

• Shielding uses trench boxes or other types of support to protect workers from collapsing material.

• Professionally engineered plans are required for excavations 20 feet deep or more.

Taken in part from OSHA Trenching and Excavation Safety Fact Sheet and the Texas Department of Insurance’s Excava-tion Safety.

“ – Mitch Post, Mabey

If you have a trench box that’s not large enough foryour excavation, or strong enough, or installed im-properly, then you don’t have a trench box.”


Mike Ross, national training coordinator, Efficiency Production. For example, many utility crossings occur in the first 5 feet of a trench. “Dealing with all the things around you is a huge driving force in what works best,” he says.

Contractors in a certain area may prefer systems based on tradition. “But it might be the absolute wrong system based on the job conditions,” Post says.

Trench protection systems are engi-neered by factoring in varying weights of soil, hydrostatic loads and the surcharge loads from items such as nearby traffic and equipment, according to Ross. In ad-dition to protecting workers, these systems must give contractors enough room to do their job.

Job conditions also change, affect-ing trench protection systems. If ground water is present in a trench, for example, Post says it can literally more than double the amount of pressure placed on a trench protection system.

From sales to rental“Trench protection used to be a sales busi-ness, then rent-to-sale, and now it’s mostly rental,” says Wendell Wood, senior trainer, National Trench Safety, Houston, Texas.

“It was a small niche,” says Tom Hart-man, senior vice president, strategic alliances, National Trench Safety. “Only in the largest cities would you have maybe one dedicated company. Now you have multiple competitors in multiple locations.


12/20/17 – Jesus (Jesse) Foster, 29, Wilks Underground Utilities, Wichita, KS 12/14/17 – Christopher Corbet, 45, Enco Plumbing, The Colony, TX


Shoring is one of three basic methods contractors can use to make sure their workers are protected in a trench.

Top tips fromcontractors

• Include trench protec-tion in your bid.

• Have an emergency plan and go over it at the start of every job. Make sure you have the local fire department’s direct number. “With 911, you may be talking to a dispatch center that’s 100 miles away,” first responder and contrac-tor Alex Roberts says.

• OSHA inspectors are not the enemy. Take a proactive approach and learn from their critiques.

• Get trained. Classes in trench safety are avail-able from a variety of sources.

“–Tom Hartman, National Trench Safety

The lines have blurred betweenmanufacturers and distributors. Both are looking at the opportunityto expand their equipment.”



Now everybody wants in.”Market estimates now put the

trench protection industry at between $1.1 billion to $1.5 bil-lion in annual sales. The largest player in trench safety rentals is United Rentals, which bought NES Trench Safety in 2002. Ac-cording to the firm’s 2017 annual report, rental revenues from the company’s combined trench, power and pump segments grew 27.5 percent between 2016 and 2017, to a total of $988 million. (Note: Hurricane-related rev-enues on the power and pump side affect these results.)

As elsewhere in construction equipment, trench protection has consolidated, leading to a blend-ing of who makes what and who distributes what.

“The lines have blurred between manufacturers and dis-tributors,” Hartman says. “Both are looking at the opportunity to expand their equipment.”

The industry has also re-sponded to compact construc-tion equipment’s popularity by creating lighter shoring systems. “For smaller jobs, the industry is moving from using steel to using aluminum,” explains Joe Turner, director of engineering, National Trench Safety. Another change: several trench rental firms now offer in-house capa-

bilities for engineered shoring services, required for trenches 20 feet and over.

And consulting capabilities have come to the forefront. “Consultation is a huge piece of what we do,” says Jeremy Neill, region product development manager, United Rentals Trench Safety. The company says its experts keep up with local, state and federal regulatory require-ments, helping contractors stay compliant.

Know what’s unique about a specific trenchOSHA mandates that every com-pany have a designated compe-tent person to manage safety. When it comes to trenches, this person must be trained and know the OSHA standards, know how to identify soil, know the correct use of protective sys-tems and be authorized to stop work when hazards arise.

“It’s the responsibility of the competent person to make sure they know what is unique about a specific trench and that they have the right solution,” Dow says.

Many entities offer competent-person training, including OSHA, trench protection manufactur-ers, rental companies and safety consultants. United Rentals, for

12/20/17 – Jesus (Jesse) Foster, 29, Wilks Underground Utilities, Wichita, KS 12/14/17 – Christopher Corbet, 45, Enco Plumbing, The Colony, TX

DEATH BY TRENCH

NAXSA gains steam

Increasing industry specialization in part prompted the formation of the North American Excavation Shoring Association

(NAXSA) in 2014. Designed to promote the safe and efficient use of excavation shoring practices, the association says it represents manufacturers, engineers, rental companies, distributors, educators, suppliers and govern-ment agencies.

“This has been a sleepy niche industry, and we’d like to see it grow into the type of industry the market demands,” says incoming NAXSA president Ron Chilton, president of National Trench Safety.

One area NAXSA is addressing may have a direct impact on how contractors place equipment near open trenches in the future. “We’re working on set-back guidance on where to place equipment,” says David Dow with TrenchSafety and Supply. “The OSHA standard says it should be placed a minimum of 2 feet away from a trench, but there’s a difference between a 15,000-pound backhoe and a 200,000-pound crane. The guy in the field needs some guidance as to what is and is not safe.”

Wendall Wood with National Trench Safety sees NAXSA as having a primary role in deliv-ering the trench safety message to contractors because rental companies and distributors

have constant contact with end users. “Not every contractor belongs to an association,” he says. And NAXSA has joined the Na-tional Utility Contractor’s Association and OSHA to promote NUCA’s Trench Safety Stand Down this

month. “We’re all working toward the same ultimate goal, but there hasn’t been a lot of coordination before,” Chilton says.

NAXSA has an ambitious agenda: eliminat-ing trench deaths by 2020, according to Dave Nicoli, 2017 NAXSA president. To those who might be skeptical, he says, “Eliminating polio was a high goal, too.”

Nicoli

“– Victor Serrambana Jr., VMS Construction

The industry as a whole has improved by leaps

and bounds in protecting work-ers. If another $3,000 in shoring rental on a multimillion dollar job will make or break your job, you really shouldn’t be on that job.”



12/28/17 – Zachary David Hess, 25, JK Excavating & Utilities, Mason, OH


DEATH BY TRENCH

example, has nine full-time trainers, and each of its 85 branch locations has trainers plus online training capa-bilities. “Workforce development is a hot button issue in construction, and people are being hired who just don’t know what the OSHA standards are, because they’re new to the industry,” Neill says.

Ross estimates that in 2017 his company trained close to 1,500 students. “It comes down to the com-petent person and how well they identify hazards,” Ross says. “If something changes on the jobsite, they fix it. It’s a continual process, and they need to have a firm understanding about what it entails.”

Plan, plan, planTrench protection comes into the strategy of how you bid a job, Serrambana says.

Also part of planning: walking the job to be bid, making a note of soil conditions and visible signs and utilities. “This is what we do; we’re not caught off guard,” he explains.

Experience also teaches that what’s bid is not what’s installed, says Roberts. “It may morph from a 4-foot hole and you hit water, and you might have to dig a much wider hole in order to keep it from caving in. Plan for it in the contract so you can cover yourself.”

Some contractors may automati-cally default to classifying all soils as Type C, but that may be unneces-sary. “It will exclude a lot of systems,

and it will usually require the most expensive system,” Hartman says. “They may be using a 10,000-pound trench box – and the resulting equip-ment needed to lift it – rather than a system that weighs much less.” A fail-proof system?

“Used properly, there are no examples of a trench protection system failing,” Dow says, but there are plenty of examples of failure due to improper use, from missing components to over-stressed protec-tion systems.

“If you have a trench box that’s not large enough for your excava-tion, or strong enough, or installed improperly, then you don’t have a trench box,” Post says.

Trench protection systems use manufacturers’ tabulated data, which outline, among other things, the capacity of structural elements

and depth ratings. This “tab data,” as it’s referred to, appears on a plate or sticker attached to the system. It can also be given to the jobsite competent person in paper form or be accessible via phone app. Whatever form, the tab data

for each system must be on the jobsite and acces-sible.

The contractor’s compe-tent person is responsible for matching the soil with the type of protection used. Soil changes in an excavation, but the tab data on a trench protec-tion system – for example, an allowable depth rating of 10 feet in Type C soil – does not.

The bottom line, experts say, is that operating safely is critical to your company’s future. “When you’re protecting your people, you’re also pro-tecting your company and

your reputation,” Wood says. Serrambana has worked in the

trenches since he was a teenager. “When I look back at what I saw then, the industry as a whole has improved by leaps and bounds in protecting workers,” he says, add-ing: “If another $3,000 in shoring rental on a multimillion dollar job will make or break your job, you really shouldn’t be on that job.”

Web extrasequipmentworld.com/deathbytrench• Before you dig: Know your soil type• Contractor trench safety resources

It’s critical to know the type of soil on your job. This will be key in determining how best to protect your workers in the trench.

“ – David Dow, TrenchSafety and Supply

Every trench is going to collapse at some point, sometimes quickly, sometimes not.”


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