Employer fined in sewer workers' deaths

With water rising from a sudden downpour, eight storm sewer workers rushed to the sewer shaft at Avon Street and Edmund Avenue in St. Paul last July 26, only to have the slow pace of the crane-and-hoist system there send six scrambling for another escape route.

Dave Yasis, 23, and Joe Harlow, 34, would be swept to their deaths -- and now the state agency that investigates workplace safety has issued its harshest level of penalties against the men's employer, saying the failure of that initial escape route contributed to their deaths.

Lametti & Sons Inc., of Hugo, faces a total of $106,600 in penalties, under five citations filed by the state Occupational Safety and Health Division (OSHA) that were made public Thursday.

Two of the citations are described as "willful violations," the stiffest in the OSHA hierarchy, and each would carry a penalty of $50,000.

Lametti is contesting all five citations.

Arnold Kraft, a company spokesman, said that by characterizing two of Lametti's alleged violations as willful, OSHA is saying it "intentionally disregarded employee safety," which he said is untrue.

He added that the company has never before faced that level of allegations.

The OSHA citations and penalties were made public Thursday on the federal OSHA website. According to the website, the state division of OSHA issued the citations Jan. 22, and the company contested them Jan. 31. Next up is "an informal conference with the employer to try to negotiate a settlement agreement," said James Honerman, an OSHA spokesman.

Because of the ongoing disagreement, he declined to discuss details behind the allegations.

Last month, Harlow's family filed a wrongful-death suit against the city and the firm hired to oversee Lametti's work. Yasis' family, too, is planning legal action.

Asked Thursday if he was surprised at claims that his son's employer intentionally disregarded the men's safety, Don Harlow said: "No, not a bit surprised."

Danny Yasis, who is Yasis' father, said only: "It hurts."

No safe exit

Yasis, of Maplewood, and Harlow, of Plainview, Minn., died when the mid-afternoon downpour carried them from the tunnels in the city's Frogtown area into the Mississippi River. They had been among the six workers who gave up waiting for the hoist system in the "Avon shaft," rushing instead for a ladder more than two blocks away.

Four employees made it up safely, and then noticed Yasis and Harlow were missing.

The two willful violations alleged against Lametti say that it failed to instruct workers "in the recognition and avoidance of hazards associated with underground construction activities" and failed to "provide and maintain safe means of access and egress to all work stations," according to summaries provided Thursday by the state OSHA.

The citation itself is more specific about the work-stations access and egress issue: "On July 26, 2007," an OSHA document reads, "the employer did not ensure that employees were protected from being drowned, during a rain storm, by providing and maintaining a safe means of egress from the Avon shaft."

As for worker training, he said his previous statement that employees "had the experience and knowledge to do what they did" still held true.

Lametti also faces three serious citations, including the claim that "a power-assisted means of voice communication was not used."

Kraft said that the company used a lighting system to alert workers to get out of the tunnels, and had a speaker system, too, and that the lights were activated July 26.

Although Honerman wouldn't discuss how this case compared to past cases handled by Minnesota OSHA, Star Tribune clips show at least one case involving a fatality that started with a higher citation. But a fatal accident doesn't necessarily garner the highest fines.

For instance, in 1990, Boise Cascade Corp. initially was fined $145,554 for hundreds of job safety violations at its paper mill in International Falls. At the time it was the biggest such fine in Minnesota history.

City Public Works spokeswoman Natalie Fedie said Thursday that the company bid for the second phase, which could take up to four years to complete, but lost to a company that offered to do the work for less money.

The accident was not a factor in the city's decision to accept the other bid, she said.