After construction workers were injured on a campus work site last June, the roofing company that employed the workers was cited by federal inspectors for violating safety protocols at the time of the accident.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), a division of the United States Department of Labor, cited Apple Roofing Corp., the Syracuse-based subcontractor for the construction firm heading the East Campus Housing Project, with five violations of occupational safety regulations labeled as “serious.”
East Campus construction consists of the creation of new halls for Newing College. It began at the start of summer 2009 with the demolition of Newing College’s old Bingham Hall.
The alleged violations in the OSHA report included incidents in which workers climbed a 64-foot-tall Hydro-mobile mast tower without fall protection and traversed a four-foot gap between a scaffolding platform and the roof.
Those alleged violations also included incidents in which workers traveled to the roof on a scaffold system that was not inspected, exposing them to a fall hazard of about 64 feet. Regulators further determined that workers were not trained to recognize hazards of scaffolding work.
OSHA also cited the roofing company for conditions under which workers used a window opening to access and exit a scaffolding.
OSHA proposed initial penalties totaling $12,300 for the five alleged violations on Oct. 8 of last year. Apple then contested the violations, and one of the items was later reclassified as “other than serious,” for which the penalty was dropped. The penalties for the four other violations were decreased. Apple eventually paid $8,500 in a settlement, and the case was closed in April 2011.
“The company contested the citations but a settlement was later reached. The company corrected the hazards and paid the fine. The case was closed in April of this year,” Edmund Fitzgerald, deputy regional director for the U.S. Department of Labor, wrote in an email.
Apple declined to comment on the penalties. According to the worker who answered the phone Friday afternoon, it is company practice never to discuss such matters with the media.
“I’ve been instructed to say that,” the worker said.
Several employees of LeChase Construction, LLC., the contractor heading the project who subcontracted to Apple, either declined comment or could not be reached Friday and Saturday.
The date of the OSHA inspection of the site is listed as June 2, 2010, the same day a scaffolding collapsed and left six workers injured, some with compound fractures and bleeding.
The violations listed in the OSHA report are not considered to be actual determinations of guilt, and the fact that Apple Roofing paid penalties is not an admission of guilt on their part.
But the written comments in the citation, which was issued on Oct. 8, 2010, give insight into what regulators saw as potentially problematic working conditions.
“North side of building, on or about 6-2-10: Employees were climbing a Hydro-mobile mast tower, 64 feet 6 inches in height, without fall protection,” the OSHA report reads. “North side of building, on or about 6-2-10: A fall hazard existed when employees stepped between the scaffold platform and the roof eave, a distance of approximately 48 inches.”
When the scaffolding collapsed on June 2, four of the workers were removed from the site and taken to Wilson Memorial Hospital in Johnson City and Lourdes Hospital in Binghamton with compound fractures and bleeding. An additional worker came forward with an injury later that day. A sixth worker went to Wilson Memorial Hospital later Wednesday afternoon.
A few months later, on Aug. 30, a harness saved a construction worker from serious injury when he slipped and fell from a roof of one of the newly constructed Newing Residential Community buildings.
The worker tumbled from Building 2 at the site of Newing Community around 8 a.m.
“All of the safety equipment and gear was in place, including the safety harness which caught his fall,” LeChase spokeswoman Jennifer Miglioratti said at the time.
— Yelena Levina contributed to this report.