Friday, August 21, 2015

OSHA reports a rise in construction deaths in recent years as a result or rising economic activity





By Kaitlin Goslee 

Published: August 20, 2015




EAST LONGMEADOW, Mass. (WWLP) — 


There have been several construction accident deaths in recent weeks, with at least two of them happening in Massachusetts.

One worker was killed and several others were critically injured when scaffolding at a construction site in New Mexico collapsed this week.

In Massachusetts, a worker was killed when a construction lift fell in Tauton on Tuesday. Just a few weeks earlier a man in Longmeadow was killed while working on a sewer project.

All three are still being investigated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, better known as OSHA.

They report that the number of construction worker deaths have been rising in recent years. OSHA’s records show more than 800 construction deaths nationwide in 2013.

22News spoke to the W.J. Quinn Construction Management Company who has been doing commercial jobs in Wmass for over a hundred years.

Owner Tom Noel said on every job daily safety meetings between the workers and the person in charge are essential. “In our industry we may start out with a foundation and then we have a steal struture going up so the job is changing constantly all the time. So every day there are different scenarios,” Noel told 22News.

He also said that licensed commercial contractors and their workers are required to take OSHA’s safety certification classes and should keep up on those throughout their career as the industry evolves.