Speedups, Cost Concerns Hurt Red Line Safety Efforts, Suit Says : Metro Rail: An inspector says he was fired because of his warnings about dangers and code violations at the site. The charges are denied.

Efforts to improve safety on the Metro Red Line project after a serious 1990 fire are being undermined by pressure to speed up construction, hold down costs and intimidate or fire safety engineers who stand in the way, a former safety inspector alleged in a lawsuit filed Thursday.

Veteran safety engineer Jim Hamilton contends in the suit, filed in Pasadena Superior Court, that he was fired in January “to cover up . . . (his) numerous warnings and complaints about the potential of gas explosions, possible loss of life and safety violations occurring at the Metro Rail construction site.”

Hamilton’s lawsuit against Rail Construction Corp. and four of its contractors came a day after a methane gas scare forced the evacuation of 25 construction workers from a one-mile section of subway tunnel between downtown and MacArthur Park.

RCC lawyer Augustin Zuniga declined to comment on Hamilton’s suit, saying he had not had time to study it. But Zuniga and RCC public affairs Director Elaine Stewart dismissed the charge that the Red Line project is unsafe.

“My understanding is that RCC (safety) standards exceed Cal/OSHA standards,” Zuniga said.

Hamilton said in an interview that several veteran safety engineers were hired to improve safety on the Red Line construction job after a devastating tunnel fire in 1990, but that these engineers are ignored, intimidated or fired if they interfere too much with efforts to speed construction.

The first 4.4-mile segment of the Red Line--from Union Station through downtown Los Angeles to MacArthur Park--is scheduled to open in June, 1993. Hamilton said county transit officials want to move that date up to start service sooner and cut construction costs.

Southern California Rapid Transit District officials said recently that they have been asked if their motormen and maintenance workers will be ready to start subway service in October or December, when the first of three commuter train lines is scheduled to start service to Union Station.

Hamilton’s assertions follow allegations last month by other safety experts that the “incident rate” for injuries on the first leg of the Red Line was 2 1/2 times the national average--which they said has cost the RCC about $6 million in additional workers’ compensation claims.

Several safety workers in separate interviews concurred that poor bookkeeping has concealed the high rate from top executives and risk managers, preventing reforms.

Hamilton’s lawsuit is the second in four months to be filed by a disgruntled former subway safety worker against the RCC, the construction arm of the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission.

In December, safety representative Gloria Fuqua alleged in a suit that she had been fired an hour after stopping construction work because of unsafe levels of toxic fumes in a tunnel. Work resumed after Fuqua left, but several days later work was stopped again--this time for more than a week--after workers’ complaints resulted in a state inspection. Additional fans were installed to improve conditions. Her case is pending.

In his suit, Hamilton makes allegations similar to Fuqua’s. He said that a week before Fuqua reported a problem, he had prepared a report in which he recommended stopping work in the tunnels because of excessively high levels of two potentially explosive gases, hydrogen sulfide and methane. He said RCC safety officials and an independent construction management consultant firm, Parsons-Dillingham J.V., ignored the report.

A spokeswoman for Parsons-Dillingham--a Pasadena-based joint venture of the Ralph M. Parsons Co., DeLeuw Cather & Co. and Dillingham Construction N.A. Inc.--said the company had not seen a copy of the suit and could not comment.

At other times, Hamilton said, he stopped work on his own authority when diesel-powered delivery vehicles fouled tunnel air or discarded timbers and other litter cluttered job sites. He said that during his year on the job he issued at least 11 safety-related stop-work orders--which he said contributed to his dismissal because they slowed progress.

Hamilton alleges in his lawsuit that the RCC, Parsons-Dillingham, their subcontractors and several employees conspired to force his former employer, Parsons Constructors Inc., to remove him from the project.

According to an Oct. 17, 1991, memo to Hamilton, Parsons-Dillingham transferred him off the Red Line because he did not conform to the “RCC philosophy . . . for the safety program.”

Hamilton said he is blackballed on the Red Line project and is having difficulty finding work. “I’ve been asked by the owner to be taken off the job. It’s the worst thing that can happen,” Hamilton said.

In a separate interview, he said no one told him what the RCC philosophy is or how he allegedly violated it. By inference, he said, he understood it to mean that sticking to an accelerated work schedule and a frugal cost-containment program took precedence over all but the most imminently dangerous safety problems.

This, he added, was despite public proclamations from RCC officials that safety is the top priority.

As an example, safety inspectors for some contractors routinely were forced to work as many as 80 hours a week with little or no extra pay, he said during an interview in the office of his lawyer, Larry M. Roberts of Pasadena.

Zuniga and Stewart said they were unaware of such allegations.

“RCC doesn’t directly manage its contractors,” Zuniga said. “They’re independent contractors. . . . The only time we would get involved in that would be if there was a stop-order issued that was interfering with work. . . . Certainly we would be happy to look into something like that if people would come to us with it. But clearly, prevailing wage is the responsibility of the contractor.”

Hamilton said that inexperienced safety people added to the danger of several accidents, such as the destruction of an eight-inch gas main that required the evacuation of a large area around Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue last fall--the same main has been ruptured again--and the severing of a water main and electrical cable that touched off a small gas explosion in an electrical conduit at Wilshire Boulevard and Normandie Avenue.

Hamilton said the rush to complete the project not only resulted in accidents, but also led construction managers to ignore warnings of unsafe conditions. He said that besides his report on foul air, his bosses ignored his warnings about an illegal, jerry-built electrical system.

That system, he said, overloaded a 350-foot electrical cable, causing it to “burn like a fuse” over the Columbus Day weekend last year. The incident occurred in the same tunnels that burned in a 1990 fire under the Hollywood Freeway downtown. That blaze, which shut the freeway for several days and cost $2.2 million to fix, officially was blamed on stray sparks from a cutting torch.

“There was smoke,” Stewart acknowledged. “It was immediately handled.”

RCC and the former safety engineer agreed on that, although Hamilton said he thinks the cable was removed so fast because officials were embarrassed.