Brea Manufacturer Fined $41,000 in Worker’s Death : Workplace: Cal-OSHA also cites Kirkhill Rubber for five safety violations. A criminal investigation of March accident continues.

Kirkhill Rubber Co. has been cited for five violations of safety laws and fined $41,000 in connection with the death of an employee earlier this year, state health and safety officials announced Tuesday.

John Howard, chief of the California Division of Occupational Health and Safety in San Francisco, said a separate criminal investigation of the Brea manufacturing firm is continuing into the March 5 death of Guadalupe Lopez.

Lopez was pulled into the rolls of a rubber compressing machine while cutting and loading material into the equipment about 6:30 a.m. at the plant in the 300 block of East Cypress Street. The 55-year-old worker died of asphyxiation due to compression of his chest while partly trapped in the machine, according to coroner’s officials.

Howard said Cal-OSHA investigators, who began their inquiry on the day of Lopez’s death, determined that the machine lacked a functioning safety bar that could halt the equipment when an operator makes inadvertent contact.

Nor did the company properly maintain a reverse-motion mechanism on the machine, known as a rubber calender, which would have made it possible for employees to reverse the direction of the compressor’s rolls and free Lopez, according to Howard.

Kirkhill was issued two “willful” citations for the equipment problems, each of which carries a civil penalty of $20,000. Howard said such citations are imposed when it is found that an employer is aware of a hazard that could cause death or serious injury to an employee but fails to take measures to correct it.

After Lopez’s death, Howard said, Kirkhill eliminated the equipment-related hazards. But a third citation was levied against the firm for failing to run weekly tests on stopping devices on rubber calenders throughout the plant. Failure to perform such tests, which check the braking distance of the stopping bars, is considered a serious violation carrying a fine of $1,000.

Officials of Kirkhill, a manufacturer of custom products ranging from rocket booster linings to ski bindings, could not be reached for comment late Tuesday. In 1988, ownership of the closely held firm was transferred to its workers in a leveraged employee stock ownership program.

Cal-OSHA issued two additional citations to Kirkhill for various violations of noise standards and hazardous material label requirements, as well as inadequacies in the company’s injury and illness prevention program, employee training and record-keeping, Howard said. Those violations did not carry fines.

By law, Kirkhill has 15 working days to appeal the citations to the state Occupational Safety and Health Appeals Board, Howard said.

He added that if, at the conclusion of the simultaneous criminal probe of Kirkhill in connection with Lopez’s death, it is determined that criminal charges are warranted, the case would be referred to the Orange County district attorney’s office for prosecution.