Moms push worker safety

CARSON CITY -- Mothers of construction workers killed on the job told legislators Wednesday that their sons would be alive today if they had received proper safety training.

"If Travis had been trained, he would not have risked his own life," Debra Koehler-Fergen said during a Senate Commerce and Labor Committee hearing.

"They need more on-the-job training," Tracy Carillo added. "I am not placing blame, but there needs to be more appropriate safety training."

Carillo said workers often take unnecessary chances because they face deadline pressure from their employers to complete the construction project.

"I lay some of the deaths at the feet of Nevada OSHA," said Koehler-Fergen, who testified by teleconference from Las Vegas.

Travis Koehler, her son, died on Feb. 2, 2007, when he went into a sewer manhole at The Orleans to try to rescue fellow worker Richard Luzier, who had gone into the hole to unplug a clogged pipe.

Both men died from breathing toxic fumes.

Carillo, of Fernley, lost her son, Brian Spartan, when he fell 42 feet at a Reno construction site in March 2007. He died two weeks later.

Her husband, also a construction worker, saw the 20-year-old fall.

"It tore our family apart," she testified. "They should enforce the safety regulations. Some men forget because of deadline. I see ironworkers, construction workers up there, no hard hat, not tied off or harnessed."

Senators mainly listened Wednesday during three hours of testimony. The meeting room at the Sawyer Building in Las Vegas was crowded with about 40 people involved in the construction trade. Some wore matching union shirts.

A bill in the Assembly would require all construction workers to receive training in occupational safety. Additional hearings on safety requirements will be held in the Commerce and Labor Committee in coming weeks.

But during a hearing last week, state OSHA administrative officer Tom Czehowski said worker deaths have declined dramatically over the past year because of the attention given to the Orleans accident and numerous worker deaths at the CityCenter project.

Czehowski said six workers have died in accidents since July 1, compared with 31 deaths in the previous fiscal year.

Veteran ironworker George Cole said he cannot get the image of his lifeless brother-in-law, Harold "Rusty" Billingsley, out of his mind. Billingsley fell 60 feet to his death during an October 2007 accident at the CityCenter site.

"The regulations necessary to ensure workers' safety are in place," Cole said. "It is the lack of enforcement and penalties that break safety down."

Cole noted that his brother-in-law had death benefits of just $3,800.

"Thirty eight hundred dollars is pretty cheap for a life," he said.

Former legislator Jack Jeffrey, lobbyist for the Las Vegas Laborers Local 872, said safety pretty much has taken a back seat in his 40 years in the construction industry.

When he began, Jeffrey said, it was "almost a joke if you were too safety-minded. Only sissies did that."

Jerry Ray, a member of the American Society of Safety Engineers, added that it is incumbent on workers "to take safety on themselves."

"We need a workplace culture of safety first."

Review-Journal reporter Brian Haynes contributed to this report. Contact Capital Bureau Chief Ed Vogel at evogel@reviewjournal.com or 775-687-3901.