Golden State Freeway Tragedies Investigated : Construction: State says human error is a possible reason for fatal collapse of wall.

A construction accident on a freeway on-ramp in Arleta that killed one man may have been caused by human error when workers broke from their routine and removed all of the bolts that held a 5,000-pound quake-damaged sound wall in place, according to state labor safety officials.

Brian Fourte, 24, of Los Angeles was killed Tuesday when one 8- by 10-foot section of the sound wall collapsed, possibly because workers removed all the bolts that held the wall in place before attaching clamps from a crane that would have supported it, officials said.

Fourte was pronounced dead at the scene at the Branford Street on-ramp to the southbound Golden State Freeway, said Brian Humphrey, a Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman.

“It looks like it could have been prevented,” said Rick Rice, a spokesman for the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which investigates industrial accidents.

“We will look to see if proper procedures were followed and if the company had a system in place to prevent this type of thing from happening.”

As part of the investigation, Rice said Cal/OSHA investigators expect to complete a thorough background check of the company’s safety record by today.

Mike Lawson, spokesperson for Granite Construction in Watsonville, which hired the Oakland -based Rondeau Bay Construction Co. to remove the damaged panels, said the seven- or eight-man crew had a system to remove two of the four bolts that held the 10-foot high walls before attaching two clamps from the crane before removing the final two bolts.

“It appears that on this particular panel, all four bolts were taken out before the crane was clamped on,” Lawson said.

But Alan Dones, the president of Rondeau Bay Construction Co., said company officials don’t know what caused the accident and were conducting an internal investigation into the matter.

It’s not clear if all the bolts were removed, he said, and company officials have found a bolt that was sheared off and another that appeared to be stripped, Dones said.

Rondeau has replaced about 170 wall panels along Southland freeways that were damaged in the Jan. 17 Northridge earthquake, Dones said.

Dones said there is a lot of speculation but nobody really saw what happened. “We really don’t know at this point,” he said.

At the same time, workers and company officials were still coping with Fourte’s death.

“He was a great guy,” Dones said.

Fourte was hired by the company about six weeks ago through a state Employment Development Department program to hire military veterans, Dones said.

Dones also identified Mike Andrews as the worker who was injured in the accident.

He said Andrews was treated and released Tuesday night from Pacifica Hospital of the Valley, but that no one from the company has been able to contact him.