Freeway Widening Turns Workers Into Creatures of Night

It was a roadside picnic, but this was no country lane. The road was the Ventura Freeway and instead of a noon repast, it was 1 o’clock in the morning.

Cars whizzed by a mere lane away, but the night construction crew on the U.S. 101 expansion project was too intent on the contents of their lunch boxes and on talking with each other to pay the traffic much mind. Once in a while during the half-hour break, a passing motorist knocked over a plastic cone, prompting one of the crew members to venture outside the brightly lit work area just east of Topanga Canyon Boulevard to scoop it up.

The majority of the 12-member group ignored the interruptions and concentrated on making the most of the brief reprieve from drilling and digging.

Mearl Kendrews, 41, a slim Teamster from Alaska, perched on a wood packing box on the westbound side of the freeway and passed out nut cookies she had baked that morning while the crew supervisor, a lanky Mississippian named Orion D. Schentzer, or “O.D.” for short, stood at her side chain-smoking unfiltered cigarettes.

Meanwhile, Walt Sanders, a 51-year-old labor foreman with mischievous blue eyes, slapped dust from his jeans and listened as Orlando Sisneros, a 31-year-old laborer, bragged about his 3-year-old son’s fishing exploits.

Nine weeks into the 16-month project, the night construction workers are developing a comfortable camaraderie that transforms the shoulder of the freeway into something of a miniature community. If their luck holds, this crew of nomads and night owls will continue to develop bonds that pull them together like an extended family. There will be no serious mishaps or accidents to delay the project’s completion, and motorists and residents will be spared the worst inconveniences of rush-hour construction.

“We’re all a team here. Everybody helps everybody else,” Kendrews said.

Working in two shifts, from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and from 9 p.m. to 5:30 a.m., construction crews were forced about a week behind schedule by recent rains in adding a fourth lane each way between Valley Circle and Topanga Canyon boulevards in Woodland Hills. About 47 laborers, equipment operators and foremen have been hired so far for the project, and about half of them work at night.

Lone Accident

So far, the only accident associated with either shift of the project occurred the first night, when a woman, distracted by the roadside activity, tapped the fender of the car in front of her. That’s nothing compared with other projects, veteran workers said.

“In Houston, they heaved milk cartons filled with concrete and roofing nails out of cars at us,” said Billy Boyd, a foreman from Kentucky who lives in a 35-foot trailer he towed to the Los Angeles area. “But the traveling public here hasn’t gotten into abusing us too much. Worst thing that happened is three girls in a car mooned us, if you call that abuse.”

Night work on the freeway is risky business, though, as Sisneros’ wife reminds him every evening before he leaves Baldwin Hills for work on his first night construction job.

“She knows it is good for us financially,” said Sisneros, who makes about $15 an hour. “But she is still worried.”

High-Hazard Hours

The state Department of Transportation reports that 60% of injuries or fatalities within highway work zones occur between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m., although only 20% of the construction work takes place then. Job hazards include fatigue, relatively poor visibility and wayward motorists who tend to drive faster at night on the less congested freeways.

The Los Angeles area is the second most dangerous in the state, with 91 injuries sustained by Caltrans workers during night hours between January, 1980, and March, 1988, said Michael McKnight of the transportation agency’s safety department. The San Francisco Bay Area ranked first, with 211 injuries, and Sacramento third, with 72 injuries during the same period.

Although the figures do not take into account injuries sustained by private contractors, who perform the bulk of the night construction work, the proportions are probably representative of total injuries, McKnight said. Most of the night crew work for Tutor-Saliba Corp., a contractor based in Sylmar.

Mixed Crews

The crew is composed of area residents like Sisneros and those who have come from out of state, such as Sanders, Kendrews and Schentzer, to take advantage of the union jobs. Hourly wages range from about $15 for laborers to about $25 for crane operators. Teamsters, who drive dump trucks, and equipment operators are paid 50 cents an hour more for night work, said Bill Nichols, the project manager. Other workers are paid the same wages regardless of which shift they work, he said.

“It’s easier to get night workers because it’s cooler then,” Nichols said. “Me, I’d rather work nights because the traffic is not so bad.”

But Schentzer, the night crew supervisor, predicted that abuse from motorists could worsen in the upcoming summer months when the freeway fills up with “everyone from South Bend, Ind., going to Disneyland.”

Rush-hour traffic has actually decreased since the project began, with about a third, or 337, fewer large tractor-trailer trucks on the road in March during peak commuting hours as compared to August, according to a Caltrans study. There was a 15% reduction in rush-hour traffic involving commercial trucks of all sizes, according to the same study.

Residents Complain

Caltrans has received some complaints about noise from residents living near the freeway and project headquarters on Leonora Drive in Calabasas, said spokeswoman George-Ann Rosenberg. In response, truck drivers have been cautioned not to blow their horns or slam their doors at night, and the site used to dump dirt excavated from the roadside has been moved away from residential areas where the sound of trucks backing up and the vibrations from falling dirt will not bother residents, she said.

Rosenberg said she has passed out about 500 leaflets informing apartment dwellers north of the freeway of impending construction on freeway overpasses spanning Ventura and Topanga Canyon boulevards. During a three- to five-day period scheduled to begin this week, workers will be using a crane to drive piles, or supports, under the bridges, and the work is expected to be noisy.

Noise Limits

Although the city municipal code prohibits the use of heavy machinery within 500 feet of residential areas after 10 p.m., Caltrans is exempt from the ordinance, as long as the noise does not exceed 86 decibels at a distance of 50 feet, said Wayne Pierce, a Caltrans engineer. The driving of piles under the bridges is expected to fall within those guidelines.

Pierce said the job has to be performed at night because the city will not permit the closure of surface streets before about 10:30 p.m.

Despite the annoyance to the public and the danger of injury, Schentzer said he has never regretted giving up his job as a research chemist 12 years ago for “outdoor work” on the freeways. The roadways are such a part of his life that he even married a bridge carpenter recently in a ceremony by the side of the freeway. She is his fourth wife.

Nomadic Workers

Schentzer isn’t the only nomad on the job; about 10% of the crew members are from out-of-state. Although workers often fly home on weekends, their lives can get lonely, living in hotels or renting rooms near job sites, Schentzer said. The crew becomes almost a surrogate family for the duration of the job, going to the beach or attending country-western concerts together, he said.

Once in a while, at the end of the work week, the night crew buys a case of beer and spends the morning talking “about work and, of course, women,” in a home of one of the workers, Schentzer said. “I’ve been known to bail guys out of jail for drunk and disorderly, and to loan them money.”

“Construction workers sort of stand off by themselves,” Nichols said. “But they take care of each other too.”