Drilling contractor in Quinton explosion had OSHA violations in past
By Samuel Hardiman Tulsa World
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has launched an investigation into what caused a drilling rig explosion Monday that left five dead in Pittsburg County.
Patterson-UTI Energy, the drilling firm working the rig, has had a handful of OSHA inspection violations in Oklahoma over the past 10 years. The federal agency has conducted 12 inspections of Patterson-UTI rigs and facilities in Oklahoma over the past decade and found four separate violations, according to an OSHA inspection database. However, the company isn’t among the most frequent drilling company violators in Oklahoma during that time, records show.
OSHA confirmed the investigation Tuesday, but declined to comment further.
The agency is responsible for enforcing laws and regulations governing workplace safety and health. It conducts inspections of workplaces involved in oil and gas drilling and servicing operations as it does with other industries.
“The people of Patterson-UTI are our primary focus, and keeping them safe at the well site is always our primary focus. ... We’ve operated across North America for a long time ... and for the past few years we’ve been one of the safest companies in the industry,” said Patterson-UTI President and CEO Andy Hendricks at a news conference.
In a later interview with the Tulsa World, Hendricks cited an industry benchmark for safety and said his firm exceeds that.
“For instance, the International Association of Drilling Contractors on a quarterly basis publishes the organization’s overall safety performance, and for years now … our incident reporting rate has been lower than the industry average,” Hendricks said. “Outside of the tragic event this week ... we were making good progress.”
Hendricks said the rig had gone to work for Red Mountain Energy, the operator of the site, in December.
A search of records over the past 10 years shows no instance of the site being inspected. Patterson-UTI has 30 rigs operating in Oklahoma, according to the Houston-based company’s website.
“We won’t speculate on the investigation at this point, but we will work with OSHA ... to begin the investigation because we want to learn from this,” Hendricks said at the news conference. He said that the national Chemical Safety Board, which often investigates similar incidents, had contacted the company.
“We will work with them,” Hendricks said. He said no regulator had contacted the company about suspending other operations.
A CSB spokeswoman said in an email, “The CSB is sending two investigators to gather additional information in order to determine if the CSB will be pursuing a full investigation.”
The Oklahoma Corporation Commission investigation report said authorities learned at 8:45 a.m. Monday that the well was on fire from an uncontrolled gas release.
The report recommends that the operator should kill the well with heavy drilling mud, make sure it is stabilized with mud and cement plugs, and take soil samples by Feb. 23.
Fatalities among oil and gas extraction workers in Oklahoma are relatively rare. Seven workers in the industry died between 2011 and 2016, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics database.
One worker was killed in Boley in 2017. Someone was injured in a separate Pittsburg County explosion in 2017, according to media reports.
A workplace safety expert with the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, Peter Dooley, said work in the oilfield is inherently dangerous.
“The thing that investigators need to be really looking is if there any sort of foreshadowing events ... that indicated possible problems and how they were responded to,” he said. “That’s going to be the most informative information.”
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A fiery explosion at an Oklahoma drilling rig Monday left five people missing, including three employees of the rig's owner, Patterson-UTI Energy of Houston.
The explosion cut through the Patterson-UTI rig just before 9 a.m. Monday, according to Oklahoma authorities, and the Houston driller confirmed that three of its workers were among the missing at the Pittsburg County natural gas well site. Patterson-UTI said the fire's cause was still unknown.
"At this moment, no one knows with certainty what happened, and it would be unwise to speculate," Andy Hendricks, Patterson-UTI's chief executive, said in a statement. "Well control experts and emergency responders are on-site, and we will conduct a thorough investigation when the incident is fully contained. "
Hendricks, who was traveling to Oklahoma, said the company was providing support to the families of the missing, whose names have not been released.
"There is nothing more important to us than the safety of our employees and others we partner with in the field," Hendricks said. "Tonight, our thoughts and prayers go out to all those affected and their loved ones."
Aerial footage showed several fires were still burning by midday on the rig and much of the equipment had collapsed, the Associated Press reported.
"Pretty much everything that is on location is on fire," Pittsburg County Emergency Management Director Kevin Enloe said during an afternoon news conference.
Patterson-UTI has grown in recent years into one of the nation's largest onshore drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, companies. Patterson-UTI has about 25 drilling rigs active in Oklahoma, second only to Texas, where it has nearly 60 rigs in operation.
The incident occurred at the site of one of Patterson-UTI's more modern APEX 1500 rigs, described as a "light, safe and efficient rapid deployment rig." More than 20 people were working at the well site when the explosion occurred west of Quinton, about 100 miles southeast of Tulsa, authorities said.
Confirmation of any fatalities won't be possible until the fire is extinguished and investigators can get to the scene, said Amy Elliott, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma medical examiner's office. Authorities said they are still searching the surrounding woods to see if anyone had fled into the area.
The drilling site was operated by Oklahoma City-based Red Mountain Operating, said Matt Skinner, a spokesman for the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, which regulates oil and gas operators in the state. Red Mountain did not immediately comment.
Skinner said the company has not had any incidents or complaints in the last five years.
A construction worker died from his injuries Tuesday after a large concrete column broke free and hit him in the head at the former Labor Temple Hall at South 29th Street and First Avenue South.
The man had been standing under the column when it hit him in the head, Billings Police Sgt. Harley Cagle said at the scene.
Emergency crews were dispatched to the incident at about 8:30 a.m., and the man was unconscious as he was being loaded into an American Medical Response ambulance at the construction site.
In an email sent shortly before 5 p.m., Fisher Construction Inc. President Jim Berve said a worker "succumbed to his injuries."
The company wrote on its Facebook page: "We have extended our deepest sympathies to the family and are offering as much support to the family as they need to deal with the aftermath of this tragedy."
The company is investigating the incident.
Fisher Construction Inc. co-owner Brent Sumner confirmed Tuesday morning the man was an employee. Fisher Construction is the general contractor for the Community Leadership & Development Inc. housing project, which includes a renovation of portions of the historic building.
The foreman at the scene declined to comment.
The construction crew did not appear to be working on the concrete column, which was part of the former Labor Temple Hall exterior, Cagle said.
"They were trying to remove it at some point, they'd chipped away at it, and it came down on its own," Cagle said after speaking with construction workers at the scene.
The man had been wearing a hard hat at the time, Cagle said.
The former Labor Temple Hall is being renovated as part of the low-income housing project, which was announced in November 2016. Construction began last summer, and is being completed with a $1.1 million grant from the Gianforte Family Foundation.
Traffic was partially blocked at the busy intersection Tuesday morning as police and medical personnel responded to the incident. Billings Fire Department also responded.
The construction industry has one of the highest rates of workplace injuries in Montana, which in 2016 had the fourth-highest overall workplace injury rate among U.S. states for which data was available.
The 2016 statewide rate was 4.2 injuries for every 100 full-time workers, compared with a nationwide rate of 2.9. Within the construction industry, Montana's injury rate was 4.9 per 100 full-time workers.
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The old Labor Temple Hall on Billings’ South Side isn’t going to remain a shell of its former self for much longer.
Community Leadership and Development Inc., a faith-based nonprofit development agency with a track record of constructing housing and providing services to people in need, has purchased the building and is preparing to abate the lead and asbestos inside the century-old hall and begin demolishing portions of it.
What will emerge — about $2.8 million and maybe nine months later — will be a dozen new efficiency apartments, priced below market rates; space for the ministry’s offices, which are now in two buildings; increased capacity for Hannah House Ministries, which serves low-income women and their children; and, perhaps, a business incubator or an old-fashioned community meeting spot in keeping with the history of the Labor Temple Hall, at 24 S. 29th St.
CLDI purchased the dilapidated building in September, said Eric Basye, the agency’s executive director, and already has the money on hand for abatement, demolition and design work, which is being done by Collaborative Design Architects.
The agency is raising money to renovate the hall and construct the new apartments, which will be built on two new floors planned to rise above the hall.
Stockman Bank will match up to $25,000 in donations to help with the work. Visit www.cldibillings.org or call CLDI at 406-256-3002 before Dec. 31 to have your donation matched by the bank.
“This is something we’ve been dreaming about for two years,” Basye said Thursday during a tour of the 14,000-square-foot hall, which has been, in turn, rooms to rent (1889-1912), a Chinese laundry and grocery store (beginning in 1912), a wholesale candy building (through 1944) and, since that time, the Labor Temple Hall. A grocery store also operated on the property after World War II through 1958.
According to a history compiled by CLDI’s Lisa Reinschmidt, 25 labor unions were represented and housed in the cavernous hall, which was also used for community gatherings such as quinceaneras (the celebration of a girl’s 15th birthday), funerals, wakes and baby showers.
Reclaiming and restoring the hall, reconstructing the sidewalks and constructing off-street parking “not only mirrors its historical past,” Reinschmidt wrote, “but also seeks to recreate what was once a place of pride, fellowship and community in the South Side.”
Reinschmidt, who runs Hannah House and handles development for CLDI, said that opening up more space for Hannah House, at 109 S. 32nd St., will enable the ministry to serve 15 women at a time, up from eight.
“We now have one room open, and we got nine applications for it in five days,” she said.
The benefits of the planned new facility “are too numerous to nail down,” she said, but they include proximity to needed services, including RiverStone Health, case management through Family Promise and downtown employment opportunities, including cleaning positions at downtown hotels.
“A lot of women we work with don’t drive,” she said. “They have to get to work on foot and come home in the dark of night.”
“Our goal,” she said of the expanded facilities, “is to get women off of receiving services and restore their dignity.”
As he showed off CLDI’s future home, Basye paused inside a large, empty room that practically calls out to be transformed into a community center.
“We’re doing a community survey about how this space can best be used,” he said, and the results of the survey will influence how the space gets transformed.
One option, he said, is a community work space to house small businesses. Tenants could pay rent on a sliding scale.
An extended area in the hall's basement once was the longest bar in Montana, Basye said. It features an old concrete safe, proof that plenty of money changed hands there.
Back in the day, Basye said, parents would bring their children to the bar to enjoy a few drinks and maybe a meal while children played in a separate area.
While CLDI doesn’t plan to open any bars soon, Basye said it’s that kind of community togetherness that the agency will be trying to recreate at the new site.
The project is called Katapheugo, an ancient Greek term that refers to people fleeing for refuge. That’s a “fitting definition,” according to Reinschmidt, as the agency “seeks to offer refuge and hope in a marginalized community.”
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Community group has big plans for old labor temple
By: Ed Kemmick | February 17, 2017
Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
Community Leadership and Development Inc. has big plans for the old Labor Temple Hall at First Avenue South and South 29th Street.
Eric Basye was expecting as many as 80 volunteers to come down to the old Labor Temple Hall on South 29th Street on Saturday for what he’s calling “our first official demo day.”
Basye is the director of Community Leadership and Development Inc., a Christian organization that works on the South Side of Billings under the slogan “Rebuilding Lives, Restoring Families, Re-Neighboring Communities.”
The demolition work will be going on inside the old Labor Temple Hall, a solid brick building at 29th and First Avenue South that has 14,000 square feet between the ground floor and the basement.
CLDI’s plan is to use the long-abandoned building as its new headquarters, a community gathering space and, after adding two floors to the eastern half of the building, 14 to 16 affordable apartments.
Moving the organization’s offices from their current location, a few blocks away at 109½ S. 32nd St., would allow for an expansion of CLDI’s Hannah House program, which provides housing and life-skills training for women in crisis. The program already occupies two houses on the property in front of the CLDI offices.
The new building will be called Kataphuego, Greek for “refuge.” CLDI started looking into relocating its offices three years ago, thinking then that the new location could also include a café, coffee shop and community space.
Those plans evolved as the search for a building continued. At one point, Basye said, they thought they would be able to buy the old Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church on South 29th Street.
After that fell through, he said, “we looked at a ton of different buildings” before settling on the renovated Crane Building, a block west of the Labor Temple Hall on First Avenue. But the asking price was too much, so they settled at last on the labor building. It was a decision Basye was happy with.
“We had the opportunity to rehabilitate a building that was literally falling apart,” he said.
Built in 1889, it was used as a boarding house, Chinese laundry and grocery store, a warehouse and then a labor temple. In recent years it had been used for storage by Southside Pawn. Karri Hallock, CLDI’s financial administrator and property manager, said the building hadn’t been connected to city water since 2001.
The CLDI bought the building in September and has been working with Collaborative Design Architects since then on asbestos abatement, demolition plans and a design for the expanded building.
Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
CLDI Director Eric Basye, left, talks about the Labor Temple Hall project with CLDI employees Karri Hallock, Drew Thompson and Steve Houlihan.
On demolition day Saturday, the plan is to rip out everything from ceiling tiles to walls, leaving only one structural wall in the middle of half the ground floor. The western half of the ground floor and the same half of the basement would be connected by a stairwell and used for a community gathering space, and also available for event rental.
The other half of the ground floor could possibly house a café and catering business and maybe some space for launching small businesses. Then, 8,000 square feet will be added on two new floors above the eastern half of the building to create affordable efficiency and one-bedroom apartments.
Creating affordable housing has been the main focus of the CLDI since its founding in 1981 by former state legislator Dave Hagstrom.
Basye said the most recent estimate of the entire Labor Temple Hall project is $3.25 million. The CLDI already has about $1.9 million, mostly in the form of local donations and grants from private foundations.
That total also includes a $200,000 grant from the Downtown Billings Alliance, which would be used for abatement and construction of infrastructure like sidewalks, curbs and gutters. That grant, though, still needs to be approved by the City Council, Basye said.
Plans call for making a parking area out of a vacant lot on the north side of the building and moving the main entrance from South 29th Street to the north side.
Basye said the organization is still working with the architects on final plans for the renovation and is working internally to decide exactly what will end up in the building. They’ve got some time to figure that out.
He said the CLDI hopes to obtain final city approval for its building plans by March and then to start construction by May or June. Construction will probably take 12 to 18 months, he said.
Tuesday, January 23, 201
KIPS BAY, Manhattan (WABC) --
An elevator repairman, Jucong Wu, 33, fell to his death in an elevator shaft in Kips Bay Tuesday morning.
It happened inside 111 E. 24th Street just after 9 a.m.
The 33-year-old man was trying to repair the elevator at a construction site when he lost his balance and inadvertently fell from the ninth floor.
He was apparently installing an elevator car at a new, 12-story hotel project and was not tied off to a fall-protection safety line.
The worker was employed by U-Tek Elevator, Inc.
He was pronounced dead at the scene.
About 20 complaints had been registered against the building in the past year, but none are currently open.
The Department of Buildings has issued a full stop-work order for the site.
The NYPD and DOB are investigating his death.
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Manhattan construction worker dies after fall down elevator shaft, FDNY says
By Nicole Brown nicole.brown@amny.com
January 23, 2018
A construction worker died after falling down an elevator shaft at a building in the Flatiron District Tuesday morning, police said.
Jucong Wu, 33, was installing an elevator car on the ninth floor of 111 East 24th St., between Park and Lexington avenues, at about 8:50 a.m. when he fell, according to police.
He was found unconscious at the bottom of the shaft and pronounced dead at the scene, the FDNY and NYPD said.
Wu, who was employed by U-Tek Elevator Inc., was not tied to a safety line, the Department of Buildings said.
The building, owned by SCIPM East 24 LLC, is slated to be a 12-story hotel.
Multiple people, possibly members of Wu’s family, were crying at the scene after his body was removed from the building.
Workers at nearby construction sites carried on with their jobs as NYPD and DOB officials investigated.
The DOB issued a full stop work order for the site, which did not have any open violations as of Tuesday, a spokeswoman said. Trinity Builders Inc., the building’s general contractor, was issued more than 20 violations for the site in the past two years that have since closed, according to DOB records.
There were also multiple complaints about unsafe conditions at the site, including workers not using safety straps, in 2017, DOB records show.
U-Tek Elevator Inc. and Trinity Builders Inc. did not immediately comment. SCIPM East 24 LLC declined to comment.
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A 33-year-old construction worker died at a job site in Manhattan after tumbling nine stories in an elevator shaft, officials said.
Ju Cong Wu wasn’t attached to a safety line when he plummeted nearly 100 feet just before 9 a.m. at the E. 24th St. site near Park Ave. in Gramercy Park.
The Brooklyn man, who worked for U-Tek Elevator, died at the scene.
He was among a group of workers installing an elevator car in a new 12-story hotel project.
Workers emerged from the jobsite weeping.
“No one's telling us anything right now. We're just concerned for the worker,” said Joe, a foreman with Local 1 Elevator Constructors, who went to the site from another job.
He said the Gramercy construction site was non-union.
“I don't know what caused the accident, I wish I did,” he said. “No one’s telling us anything right now. What they’re probably going to do is try to hide up as much as possible.”
He added, “We're trying to get answers, see what happened, what caused this terrible freakin’ tragedy.”
Department of Buildings inspectors issued a stop-work order at the site as an investigation was launched.
The man plummeted to his death in an elevator shaft at a construction site on E. 24th St. near Park Ave. on Tuesday. (Jefferson Siegel/New York Daily News)
The construction site has been the subject of 17 other complaints to the Department of Buildings over the past year, records show.
In August, there were two safety complaints. In April, someone filed a complaint that said workers were not wearing safety equipment.
A complaint in March stated that debris was unsecured and flying off the building.
All of the prior complaints have been closed.
“We have no statement for now,” a U-Teck official said.
There were 12 construction deaths in 2017, officials said. The Tuesday morning death was the first in 2018.
Gary LaBarbara, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council, decried the death.
“Once again, a construction worker's life is tragically lost and a family is in mourning in New York City,” he said. “After a fatality last month and now another today, we are asking the City to immediately convene the Construction Safety Task Force that was part of legislation passed in the City Council last year and address this out of control epidemic.”
