Ship Deaths Inquiry Seen as Test of U.S. Safety Program

The deaths of six civilian workers at National Steel & Shipbuilding Co. here is providing the first major test of the new federal occupational safety and health program launched in California to replace the California program abolished by Gov. George Deukmejian.

The accident, the worst in the shipyard’s history, occurred shortly after midnight last Thursday when a crane-operated steel basket carrying 12 men fell nearly 30 feet to the deck of the combat support ship Sacramento.

Four men died at the scene, and two others died on Friday at UC San Diego Medical Center. Their six co-workers were hospitalized for injuries ranging from minor cuts and bruises to serious internal injuries.

A preliminary investigation by San Diego police found no evidence of criminal negligence in the case. The police report, based on interviews with the crane operator, injured workers and eyewitnesses, concludes that there was no “gross criminal negligence” on the part of either the operator or the company, police spokesman Bill Robinson said.

However, officials in the San Diego County district attorney’s office said they will wait to review a more detailed report from the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration in several weeks before determining whether to pursue criminal charges.

The probe, expected to last about three weeks, is being conducted by a 10-member team composed of three NASSCO officials, three union safety representatives, two federal OSHA investigators and two Navy officials.

“This will be our first chance to see how this new system works--or doesn’t work,” said Jan Chatten Brown, who specializes in industrial accidents as a special assistant to Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner.

Contending that the federal government could do as well as the state in protecting California’s private sector workers, Deukmejian last week vetoed $7 million from the California budget that would have funded the state’s Cal/OSHA program for fiscal 1988. Deukmejian initially announced his intention to eliminate the state program in January and the federal agency has been gearing up to take over for several months.

Partly because of the problems associated with moving into its new office in San Diego, federal OSHA investigators did not reach the shipyard until nearly eight hours after the accident.

Don Amos, district manager of the California Division of Safety and Health--the former Cal/OSHA office--said fire officials notified him of the accident within half an hour. Amos then attempted to reach Jerry Ryan, acting area federal OSHA director, but could not do so because Ryan had checked out of the hotel where he had been staying.

But in interviews it became clear that there might have been a delay even if the federal OSHA office had not just started operations. Federal OSHA offices, unlike the former California counterparts, are not equipped with 24-hour answering services, so OSHA officials did not learn of the accident until they reported to work Friday morning.

Although most investigators prefer to reach the scene of an accident as soon as possible, OSHA and NASSCO officials and others argue that the eight-hour time lag created no serious problems.

After the victims had been removed from the deck of the Sacramento, the scene was roped off so as not to disturb potentially important physical evidence.

Ryan said: “Whether we would have responded immediately even if I had gotten the call at 1 o’clock in the morning is debatable. We’re not in the emergency response business. That’s left to local authorities. Our first concern is, ‘Are any other people at risk?’ Our second concern is whether the accident scene might be changed, making it more difficult to reconstruct what happened.

“As long as there’s no problem in those two areas, there’s no need to get there right away. We can interview people and examine the scene just as well later, without getting in the way of police and medical personnel.”

But Chatten Brown, Reiner’s aide, said OSHA’s delay in dispatching investigators to the shipyard illustrates “the way things may happen on occasion, but not the way they should happen.”

“The general rule is you want someone at the scene (as soon as possible),” Chatten Brown said. “Time can work against you by giving everyone a chance to think, ‘Why should I volunteer this information when it might endanger my job?’ ”

Ryan said, however, that possibility has not been a factor thus far in this case.

“We’ve been able to reach the people we needed to,” he said.

Times labor writer Henry Weinstein in Los Angeles contributed to this story.