Nearly five years after an employee died in a trench collapse, a Missouri contractor exposed two workers to the life-threatening risk of being buried by thousands of pounds of soil as they worked in an unprotected trench weakened by water pooling in an excavation site, according to a U.S. Department of Labor Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) inspection.
On Oct. 14, 2021, OSHA inspectors observed two employees of Blue Springs, Missouri Arrow Plumbing installing water piping in a trench at an Eagle One residential construction site and identified 12 alleged violations. The agency cited the company and owner Rick Smith for four willful violations, one repeated violation and seven serious violations of federal standards. OSHA proposed $796,817 in penalties.
Following the October investigation, OSHA cited Arrow Plumbing for two instances of willfully allowing workers to enter the trench without providing cave-in protection, as well as willful citations for allowing water to accumulate in the trench, which compromised the integrity of the excavation’s walls, and failing to keep soil piles at least 2 feet from the edge of the excavation. The company also allowed workers to walk under suspended loads, failed to provide hardhats, used ladders improperly, failed to train workers and exposed them to struck-by hazards.
Arrow Plumbing has a significant history of OSHA violations. Following the fatality investigation in 2016, the company resolved federal safety citations by agreeing to comply with the terms of a settlement agreement entered before the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission in 2018. The agreement required the company to hire a safety consultant to design and implement a trench safety program and ensure employees complete OSHA construction and trenching and excavation training courses. However, Arrow Plumbing did not hire a safety consultant until Feb. 1, 2021 – three years after it promised to do so. The agreement also called for the company to pay $225,000 in previous fines via five payments of $45,000 over four years. To date, Arrow has only made one payment.
In August 2020, OSHA cited the company again after it discovered an employee working in another unprotected trench in Grain Valley. The company has contested the citations.
Source: OSHA
Topics Contractors Missouri
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