Thursday, May 28, 2015

OSHA OFFICIALS INVESTIGATING DEATH OF COLUMBIA COUNTY CONSTRUCTION WORKER IN GEORGIA



 THURSDAY, MAY 28, 2015

Officials with the federal Occupational Safety & Health Administration are investigating the death of a 20-year-old Mexican man who was fatally injured earlier this month in a fall at a Columbia County construction site.

Ricardo Ramirez Aguas, of Jackson Road in North Augusta, was pronounced dead in the early hours of May 16 at Georgia Regents Medical Center, according to Columbia County Deputy Coroner Harriett Garrison.

Garrison said Aguas was injured in a fall at a new home construction site in the Bartram Trail neighborhood in Evans about 2:30 p.m. on May 15. Garrison said the man had just delivered some water bottles to other members of a crew framing the second story of a house on the site when he fell, striking his head on a concrete floor in the basement area about 20 feet below.

“They said he came down to get water. He had four bottles of water with him,” Garrison said. “They did not see him fall, but when they turned around and looked he was on the cement in the basement part of the house.”

Garrison said the framing crew included Aguas’ two brothers and a brother-in-law and were employed by Noe Martinez, of 4189 Wheeler Road. Officials initially had a difficult time determining the circumstances of the death and locating Aguas’ employer because of the language barrier, Garrison said.

“None of these folks spoke English,” she said. “None of them had Social Security cards; none had visas or ID cards.”

A call to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesperson was not returned Thursday.

Garrison said Aguas’ body was returned last week to his home in the Mexican state of Queretaro.

William Fulcher, director of OSHA’s Atlanta East Area, which covers Augusta and Columbia County, said the agency was “actively investigating” the incident to determine whether safety regulations were violated at the construction site.

Fulcher identified the incident location as 2149 Fothergill Drive, where a new single family home is being built by Ashworth Homes LLC.

Ashworth Homes owner Russell Toxey Smith said he didn’t “feel comfortable” discussing the incident with a reporter on Thursday.

“I really don’t know much about it,” Smith said.

Fulcher said Aguas’ employer was working as a subcontractor for Ashworth Homes, which could also be held responsible for work site violations, should any be discovered.

“We also can look at who controls the job site and hold them just as responsible as we do the actual employer,” he said. “Regardless of whether there is a fatality or not, when we document a hazard, we will address that in the form of a violation or citation to the employer.

“If the violation is considered to be serious we are mandated by the OSHA Act to issue a penalty, and that penalty could range up to $7,000.”

Fulcher said OSHA takes falls very seriously because they are one of the leading causes of worker deaths in the U.S., and most are preventable.

“Fall accidents in construction account for about 30 to 40 percent of all the fatal accidents that OSHA investigates here in Georgia,” he said. The general rule for construction fall protection starts at 6 feet.”

Above that height, employers are supposed to provide “positive fall prevention” measures, such as railings, safety harnesses and safety nets to prevent injury to workers, he said.

In addition to safety measures, employers also are required to provide training to workers on what hazards they will encounter and how to avoid them, in the worker’s native language, which Fulcher said can sometimes be a problem in the construction industry.

“It all falls back on the employer,” he said. “If all they hire are Spanish-speaking employees, either they need to be speaking Spanish also or have a translator so the communication can be effective.”

Report a workplace safety violation to OSHA
Call the Atlanta East Area office at (770) 493-6644, or the 24-hour hotline at (800) 321-OSHA.