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Construction Safety Dispatch Articles
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State investigators say an Owings Mills contractor was partially to blame for a July construction accident at the Maryland Live! casino site in Hanover that cost a worker the toes on one of his feet.
No blame, however, was assigned in a wall collapse at the construction site later that month that claimed the life of one worker and the leg of another, officials with the Maryland Occupational Safety and Health Administration said.
Even though investigators do not know what caused the 100-ton, precast concrete wall to tumble on July 29, the state found no evidence of wrongdoing by L.R. Willson & Sons, the subcontractor that employed the two men.
Eric Uttenreither, an assistant commissioner of MOSH, said the worker who survived declined to speak to investigators.
"Why he didn't want to speak to us, I don't know. But he wouldn't speak to us," Uttenreither said.
Neither the contractors involved nor the developers behind the casino returned calls or emails yesterday for comment.
Hanover-based Commercial Interiors, the lead contractor working on construction of the casino, issued the following statement though.
"We have a highly professional work site with extensive safety measures in place. Unfortunately, accidents do sometimes happen, but the construction of the project continues in a safe and professional manor. We are very proud of the work of the craftsmen on the site," the statement read.
Attempts to reach Juan Carlos Baires, the man who lost his toes, and Darbin Suazo-Jimenez, the man who lost his leg, were unsuccessful.
But the mother of the 27-year-old man who died blasted MOSH yesterday for closing its investigation into the death of her son, Leon Ray Sax of Hanover, Pa., without filing charges.
"It makes me sick to my stomach," said Deborah Sax. "I have a dead son and they just get to go on like nothing happened."
Nonfatal
After a six-week investigation into a July 5 incident at the construction site, MOSH issued two citations against Daniel Schuster Inc. of Owings Mills, a contractor specializing in concrete work.
According to reports and documents, there was one "serious" and one "other than serious" citation. The first says the company failed to remove or properly support a hazard, namely a 6,000-pound jersey wall. The second says the company failed to provide the worker a ladder to get in and out of the hole where he was injured.
A hearing on the citations, which seek a total of $4,500 in fines, is scheduled Feb. 22 in Hunt Valley.
The citations stem from the July 5 incident in which a jersey wall fell inside a hole, crushing a worker's foot. Doctors ultimately amputated all five toes on the right foot of Baires, 25, of Montgomery Village.
The report says Baires was working with another man in an excavator to dig holes at the work site. The holes were supposed to be 4 feet deep and it was Baires' job to measure them.
At the time of the accident, the duo was working on a hole next to a jersey wall, which was supposed to have been moved by another work crew.
The excavator started work directly next to the unsecured jersey wall and moved away to let Baires climb inside. While Baires was in the hole, the ground under the jersey wall gave way. It fell inside the hole onto Baires' right foot.
Fatal accident
MOSH investigated the fatal accident more than three months before deciding on Nov. 3 to close the case without filing citations.
According to a partial MOSH report obtained by The Capital, the precast concrete wall was composed of four separate sections stacked on top of one another. Each section was about 7 feet tall, 31 feet long and 2 feet thick. Each weighed about 49,900 pounds - about 25 tons.
The sections were stacked on top of one another at least three days prior to the collapse, the report said.
Sax and Suazo-Jimenez were connecting a 43-foot steel I-beam to the western side of the concrete wall and preparing to connect the wall to a second concrete column when the wall gave way. Sax was in a scissor lift and Suazo-Jimenez was straddling the wall, the report said.
The top section of the wall crushed Sax and severed Suazo-Jimenez's leg.
Deborah Sax said yesterday she was not told the investigation had been completed.
"How can they close it without knowing what happened?" she said. "I don't understand."
Source: Scott Daugherty, Hometown Annapolis
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