Harold Felton, 36, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Tuesday, January 26 while working at a sewer repair project in a West Seattle neighborhood. Mr. Felton’s employer was Alki Construction.
Q13Fox reports:
- Mr. Felton was working inside a 10-foot deep trench which was situated between two homes.
King5.com reports:
- “…the walls of the trench gave way and buried the man under several feet of soil.”
- “For about 20 minutes, it was a rescue operation, but it became clear the man wouldn't make it.”
Using OSHA’s on-line database, it does not appear that the Washington State OSHA program has conducted any inspections involving Alki Construction, at least since 2000.
The AFL-CIO’s annual Death on the Job report notes:
- The Washington State OSHA program has 110 inspectors to cover more than 175,000 workplaces. With that number of inspectors, it would take 49 years for them to inspect each workplace in the State just once.
- The average penalty for a serious violation in Washington State is $896.
- The median penalty amount for a work-related fatality occurring in Washington State is $2,250.
Washington State OSHA has until the end of July 2016 to issue any citations and penalties related to the incident that stole Harold Felton’s life. It’s likely they’ll determine that his death was preventable. It was no “accident.”
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Harold Felton’s work-related death could have been prevented. That’s how I see the findings from Washington State-OSHA in the agency’s recent citations against Alki Construction.
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The people who climb in trenches to facilitate construction work are typically not educated in things like soil density, angle of repose, thixotropy, potential energy, and basic trench safety procedures. . Additionally, and probably as a function of this ignorance, they are often fearless. We could probably save a good number of lives each year by requiring that trench work NOT be undertaken without the proper safety equipment and training. However, adolescent brained libertarianism, typically encouraged by self interested silver spoon idiots, bridles at this sort of restriction, so we will continue to lose many workers each year to this type of event.
"Thixotropy is a time-dependent shear thinning property. Certain gels or fluids ( or soils ) that are thick (viscous) under static conditions will flow (become thin, less viscous) over time when shaken, agitated, or otherwise stressed (time dependent viscosity)."
Let me guess. No safety equipment, no reinforcement to the trench.
It is imperative that the departments at work who are investigating the situation and Gathering all evidence be given the chance to do so and any speculations regardless how intelligent You Think You Are is up to the experts to determine exactly how and why this happened. The investigations are ongoing can have not been disclosed at this time however a comment from a person in authority has told my daughter without going into details that violations have been made. How numerous and to what Extant has also not been disclosed. Trust me we are all waiting to find out the final report I would ask that you keep my daughter and granddaughter in your prayers as it is still difficult to grasp this tragedy thank you.