Metro Rail Safety Is Far Worse Than U.S. Average : Tunnel: The number of accidents is 28% higher than industry standards. Dozens were improperly reported.

The worker injury rate for Los Angeles Metro Rail construction is far worse than the national average, and project records show that dozens of injuries on a tunnel that burned in July have not been properly reported.

After the devastating tunnel fire, state and local officials praised the safety record on the downtown portion of the $3-billion subway that is to stretch to the San Fernando Valley.

The Times found that the frequency of accidents on the project exceeds industry and government safety standards, including those compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and used by Metro Rail to judge its own safety.

During the last three years, records show, 1,453 workers on Metro Rail suffered injuries such as cuts, sprains, broken bones and eye damage.

Records and documents show that some accidents were reported months late or not at all.

The severity of the accidents ranged from nail puncture wounds and welding burns to broken ribs and back injuries from falls. All injuries were serious enough to require treatment by a doctor, and some resulted in layoffs or hospitalization.

As of Aug. 1, the frequency of injuries was nearly 28% higher than the national norm for construction projects, Metro Rail’s own figures show. The project also was about 6% higher than the national average in work days missed because of accidents.

Metro Rail has not experienced any fatalities. California has a relatively low tunnel death rate of one per 136 miles of tunnel, contrasted with a worldwide average of one death per mile.

Officials at Southern California Rapid Transit District, which operated the project until July, continue to defend its safety record, noting the absence of fatalities among thousands of workers employed on the project. “I don’t think the record is one of disgrace,” said RTD safety director Harold E. Storey. “It’s a good record.”

The rival Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, which took over the project, acknowledges that there are too many accidents. Officials say they hope to reduce the number by offering contractors financial incentives to improve safety. “The rates are running high,” said Ed McSpeden, president of the Rail Construction Corp., which supervises the project for LACTC. “The fact that there are no fatalities, that could change in an instant.”

On Friday, a crane operator fell 20 feet down a tunnel air shaft, breaking his arm and dislocating his elbow. The accident occurred in the same tunnel that burned in July.

On Saturday, a small fire was discovered smoldering in a parallel tunnel next to the site of the blaze in July. City firefighters said the latest fire was under investigation but was “probably” caused by an electrical malfunction. Although workers were on the job, no one was injured.

Metro Rail, the city’s largest public works project in recent decades, is a 17-mile subway designed to link downtown Los Angeles to North Hollywood. The first 4.4-mile phase is $135 million over budget and at least 18 months behind schedule. It has been under construction in the downtown area since late 1987, and is scheduled for completion in January, 1994.

The project’s safety practices have come under scrutiny since the July 13 fire that gutted a 750-foot segment of tunnel near Union Station, closing the Hollywood Freeway for a few days and disrupting downtown Los Angeles traffic.

The Fire Department is trying to determine whether the $2.2-million inferno was touched off by a preventable industrial accident, arson or another cause. The district attorney’s office is investigating whether any safety violations figured in the fire.

During the fire, RTD board President Nick Patsaouras assured the public that Metro Rail has an “excellent safety record.” Robert Stranberg, director of the state’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which enforces state industrial safety laws, termed the subway “a very safe job” and added that the RTD “has done an outstanding safety job and so has Cal/OSHA.”

Contacted last week by The Times, Patsaouras said he had been unaware of the high injury rate. Stranberg said that he based his comments on information available at the time.

The official overseeing Metro Rail construction for Stranberg and supervising Cal/OSHA’s fire investigation is Byron Ishkanian, who until May was the RTD official in charge of safety on Metro Rail. Cal/OSHA officials considered the potential for a conflict of interest, a spokesman said, but decided it was proper to have Ishkanian enforce state safety laws on a project that he oversaw for RTD.

“It (was) not a conflict of interest but could almost be an enhancement because he was so intimately involved in the tunnel project, and was so knowledgeable about it,” Cal/OSHA spokesman Rick Rice said.

Despite the high frequency of injuries, Ishkanian said he still believes Metro Rail is “the safest big project in this country, probably in the world.”

Those in charge of Metro Rail safety also questioned the significance of the high accident rates, saying national norms were not a realistic standard because they lump tunnel projects and stations with bridges, sewers and all other forms of construction.

Metro Rail’s accident rates should only be compared to other subway projects, RTD safety director Storey said.

That is precisely the standard that LACTC plans to apply in the next leg of subway construction. Under LACTC’s safety standard, Metro Rail’s workers are being hurt at a rate that is 38.75% greater than the norm for comparable tunnel and station construction.

“A lot of things about this trade are dangerous in some respects, especially down there,” said an iron worker who was injured, speaking on condition of anonymity.

An operating engineer said, “I think it’s as safe as you can get. It’s your own responsibility.”

The key tool for tracking accident rates is a form called the Employer’s Report of Occupational Injury or Illness. Each contractor is required by state law to file the report with the Metro Rail insurance company within five days of any injury treated by a doctor. Without this report, Metro Rail’s insurance company cannot pay workers’ compensation insurance to the doctor--or to the worker if he or she is unable to return to the job.

Failure to file the report on time is punishable under the state labor code by a fine of $50 to $200 per late report.

Contractors also must file each injury report with Metro Rail safety officials so they can keep track of accidents and try to prevent more.

Metro Rail records show that at least 54 accidents on project A130, the tunnel that burned, should have been recorded during the first half of this year. But only 23 injuries were listed on charts and graphs used to track the project’s accident rates, leaving 31 unrecorded.

Also, more than a dozen of the accidents were reported several months late by the contractor, documents show.

The accident rate has a direct impact on Metro Rail’s cost for workers’ compensation insurance. A large volume of even minor injuries can drive up the price.

RTD has paid more than $19 million to its workers’ compensation insurance carrier to cover the 1990-91 fiscal year. With a good safety record, the district could get as much as $7 million of that back after work is finished, said Gerald Surfus, manager of the RTD insurance program. A poor safety record, Surfus said, could end up costing Metro Rail millions of dollars in lost refunds.

Prompt and accurate accident reports are important signals that could head off severe safety problems, according to independent safety and insurance experts.

“Lots of accidents and injuries will lead into serious accidents and injuries such as deaths and disabling injuries,” said Ian (Scotty) Paterson, a Palo Alto safety consultant with 42 years’ experience in the construction industry.

At least two months before the tunnel fire, Metro Rail officials were warned that the contractor, Tutor-Saliba-Perini, was delinquent in filing mandatory accident reports, Cal/OSHA’s Ishkanian confirmed.

Several former A130 workers, he said, complained to Cal/OSHA in May that they were unable to receive workers’ compensation insurance payments because their accidents never had been reported.

Ishkanian said he contacted Chuck Kelso, who is in charge of Metro Rail safety for the consortium of Ralph M. Parsons Co., Dillingham Construction Co. and Deleuw, Cather & Co., hired by RTD to manage all aspects of subway construction.

“I had Mr. Kelso come over and we told him about our problem,” said Ishkanian, who had left RTD a few weeks earlier.

Kelso initially told The Times: “I’ve never been told that there are injuries that are not reported.”

Later, he acknowledged that both Cal/OSHA and the Metro Rail insurance carrier, Argonaut Insurance, had alerted him to a problem. He said he was unable to act because he needed more information from the insurance company.

An Argonaut spokesman refused to comment.

Eric Carlin, Tutor-Saliba-Perini’s project manager on the tunnel, initially said he did not know of any unreported accidents or problems with late reporting.

After checking, he acknowledged that accident records were in such disarray that all 132 injuries that occurred after work began in 1988 were being re-reported.

The staff could not figure out which accidents had been reported, said Carlin, noting that he knew of 11 unreported injuries dating back almost a year. “I don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “As soon as we became aware of it (the reporting problem), we responded.”

Responsibility for filing the reports lies first with the contractor’s safety representative, but both the contractor and Metro Rail safety officials are supposed to ensure that it is done properly.

The safety representative for A130 was Joe Garner, who quit in August. Garner could not be reached for comment.

In July, the district attorney’s office, as part of its investigation into safety problems at the fire, began reviewing a complaint that Garner had falsified his resume to qualify as a state-certified safety representative.

The Times found apparent inaccuracies in the only two previous safety-related mining jobs listed on his application.

In May, when Cal/OSHA tried to revoke Garner’s tunnel-safety credentials for other reasons, Ishkanian blocked action. Ishkanian said he knew Garner’s work from their days together at RTD and “thought the complaint was frivolous.”

Metro Rail Worker Accident Levels Charts trace accident rates among workers on the Los Angeles Metro Rail subway project and compare them to national average in two categories. While these charts show Metro Rail project accident levels rising above the national average, the accident rates may be even higher because dozens of accidents were not reported in timely fashion. Frequency of accidents National Average: 6.8 (1988) Number of accidents per 200,000 work hours Severity of injuries National average: 142.2 (1988) Number of lost workdays per 200,000 work hours Source: PDCD, the consortium hired to manage Metro Rail construction