Safety Inspector Assails Accident Record of Red Line Construction

Despite official promises that safety precautions would improve last year, an independent safety inspector told the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission on Wednesday that the accident rate on Metro Red Line subway construction is more than twice the national average.

Bob D’Amato, safety director of Encino-based American Safety and Risk Management Services, told the commission that the overall accident rate is 2.24 times average, and the rate on some job sites is so bad that “nearly every worker had a ‘recordable’ injury.”

D’Amato also asserted that safety inspectors were deliberately covering up accidents and unsafe working conditions to make themselves look better. He privately alleged that inspectors do not address unsafe conditions because their company is paid to process workers’ compensation claims.

“You people are relying on (these consultants) to do the job, and they won’t,” D’Amato told the commission board. “They haven’t been doing it for years, and you’ve been letting them get away with it.”

Ed McSpedon, president of the commission’s Rail Construction Corp. subsidiary, said an audit is under way to verify D’Amato’s contentions.

Commission officials had pledged to reduce the accident rate by introducing financial incentives for contractors when they took over construction management from the Southern California Rapid Transit District two years ago. The accident rate then was 28% above average.

D’Amato said heavy-construction projects generally have accident rates of about 15.1%. This means, he said, that on average 15 out of every 100 workers suffer an injuries that need more than first aid--such as hospitalization, stitches, casts or prescription medication.

The accident rate was 98.95% on a section of Red Line tunnel east of Union Station, D’Amato said, meaning that there were nearly as many serious injuries on the job as there were workers.

The rate also was very high--54.28%--during the construction of the Red Line platform inside Union Station itself, D’Amato said in a letter to the board.

D’Amato praised the rail corporation’s current audit of safety, but he complained that after an earlier investigation, “little concrete action has been taken or (is) expected to be taken to change the picture.”

Transportation commissioners must take an active role in pressuring for safer work sites before a worker gets killed, he added.

“Safety is not being enforced, or there would not be anywhere near the numbers of accidents on the job,” he said.