Kansas City area company fined again over lax safety, six years after worker died
Arrow Plumbing of Blue Springs was slapped Wednesday with a $796,817 fine by the U.S. Department of Labor for, among other violations, putting the lives of two workers at risk who were digging unsafe trenches that had the potential to collapse and bury them alive.
The fine comes four years after the Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined the company $225,000 following the 2016 death of a worker. Donald “D.J.” Meyer of Oak Grove, who was 33, a plumber and single father, was killed when the walls of an 8-foot-deep trench collapsed on top of him.
After that tragedy, Arrow agreed to hire a safety consultant to design and implement a trench safety program. It also agreed to ensure that its employees go through an OSHA trenching, excavation and training course.
The Department of Labor, in announcing the most recent fine, noted that it took three years, until February 2021, for Arrow to hire the safety consultant. Although the $225,000 fine was to be paid in five payments of $45,000 annually, the company so far has only made one payment.
OSHA also cited the company in August 2020 after it discovered an employee working in another unprotected trench in Grain Valley. The company has contested those citations.
Now the company and its owner, Rick Smith, are being cited after OSHA inspectors, in October, found two Arrow employees installing water piping in an unprotected trench where water was pooling and, as a result, “exposed two workers to the life-threatening risk of being buried by thousands of pounds of soil.”
OSHA identified 12 safety violations that included two instances of allowing workers to “willfully enter a trench” without cave-in protection, allowing water to pool in the trench in a way that compromised the integrity of the trench walls, and failing to keep soil at least two feet away from the edge of the trench.
“Even though Arrow Plumbing and owner Rick Smith agreed to implement a comprehensive trench safety program after a previous fatal trench collapse, employees were again found to be working in an unprotected trench,” said OSHA Area Director Karena Lorek in a prepared statement. “This conduct is unacceptable, and OSHA will do everything possible to hold Mr. Smith accountable for failing to protect his workers.”
Trenching standards require protective systems in trenches deeper than five feet. The company also allowed workers to walk beneath suspended loads, did not provide workers with hardhats, used ladders incorrectly and failed to train workers, OSHA’s statement said.
“Arrow Plumbing and Rick Smith’s extensive history of OSHA inspections and their agreement with OSHA appear to have had little impact on their daily operations and their promise to implement OSHA and industry-recommended safety precautions,” OSHA acting regional Administrator Steven J. Kaplan said in prepared statement. “All of this, despite knowing firsthand how deadly a trench collapse can be.”
Attempts to reach Arrow Plumbing or Rick Smith for a comment were unsuccessful Wednesday. Arrow and Smith have 15 days to pay the fine or to contest it through the agency.
Between 2011 and 2018, the Bureau of Labor Statistics report that 166 workers died in trench collapses in the U.S. In 2019 alone, 24 workers died on trenching or excavation projects.
