Tunnel Diggers’ Complaints Raise Job Safety Questions

It is 6:30 p.m. in the muddy underbelly of the metropolis, and the six filthiest men in Los Angeles are vanishing in a cloud of smoke.

Crew boss Dave McKnight encourages the men to lift a heavy steel strut from his roaring front loader at the face of a Metro Rail subway tunnel under Studio City amid a blast of toxic fumes and a light rain of gritty dust.

None of the workers wear all the protective gear state officials say are required for such loud, dusty, abrasive situations--safety glasses, earplugs, gloves. And the foreman, who forgoes all the protection, has pumped out so much diesel exhaust that a gas-testing meter showed that the carbon monoxide level had reached 40 parts per million, double the legal limit.

“I’m here to make as much ground as I can, as fast as I can,” McKnight said later. “Maybe I’m a Neanderthal, I don’t know. But I do like the old ways better.”

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has promised a new approach to tunneling, but a seven-hour visit with McKnight’s crew March 22, interviews with miners, quality inspectors and state health investigators, and a confidential safety survey obtained by The Times, raise questions about the attention to safety.

During the visit, a reporter witnessed spotty use of personal protective gear, a diesel front loader that spewed unsafe levels of carbon monoxide and diesel soot, a ventilation unit that in one instance blew noxious air toward workers, an overloaded personnel-lifting cage and a medical technician working as a gas tester without a state license.

“If we witnessed those conditions on an inspection they would be considered violations,” said John Wachter, a regional manager for Cal/OSHA, the state’s occupational safety watchdog agency, when told what the reporter had observed. Wachter said Cal/OSHA would have demanded that corrective action be taken and could have levied fines for each infraction.

On Tuesday, Cal/OSHA investigators decided to find out for themselves. Responding to an anonymous complaint about safety violations, they conducted their first inspection of the tunnels, which had not been examined because they are just the start of a 2.3-mile excavation. The agency said it would release the results within 30 days.

MTA Satisfied

MTA director of safety Dan Jackson contends that his own investigators are satisfied with the attention to safety in the Studio City tunnels, which start across from Universal Studios at Lankershim Boulevard. He pointed to a Los Angeles County Grand Jury report last month that commended the MTA on its quality-assurance and safety efforts. Told of the observations seen in the tunnel by the reporter, however, Jackson said: “That has not come to my attention. It’s totally unacceptable.”

Traylor Bros.-Frontier Kemper, the Indiana-based joint venture excavating the tunnels, and JMA, a North Hollywood-based construction management consortium hired by the MTA to ensure the quality of the project, declined to comment.

Miners, however, had plenty to say.

Over the past month, they voiced concerns about what they called a lax attitude toward safety at the construction site.

“We don’t need meters to tell when we can’t breathe,” said Manny Gomez, a miner who commutes from Mojave. “Your eyes are watering, your throat is scratchy, your lungs hurt, you get a headache, you feel weak. Sometimes you can’t see because of the fumes.”

“The safety guys don’t seem to care about us,” Gomez said.

In the confidential safety survey--which was based on a Feb. 27 inspection of the construction site--the top safety manager at a firm working for JMA complained that the MTA safety representative for the project “is infrequently seen and inconsistently attends weekly meetings.”

The author of the survey, Jeff Wahl, said: “A positive relationship between [Traylor Bros.] personnel and the assigned MTA safety representative has failed to develop.”

During the inspection for JMA, Wahl found that the use of approved safety glasses even by the management firm’s own personnel “was minimal” and he demanded “100% compliance.” Among other items, he also found that inadequate measures were taken to shield workers from being hit by a mobile crane.

JMA project manager Alastair Biggart, who was operations director for the firm that tunneled beneath the English Channel, told his resident engineer at the Studio City project in a memorandum that the audit revealed “far too many safety violations.”

In response to questions about the safety survey, Jackson said in an interview that JMA had no contractual responsibility for subway construction safety in addition to its quality-assurance role. “I don’t know why they wrote it,” he said.

Jackson did acknowledge that MTA safety officials “need to improve” their relationship with Traylor Bros. and that the MTA is considering permanently stationing a safety representative at the Studio City construction site. Now, the MTA’s safety representative is responsible for up to four construction sites, generally visiting each once a day. About the crane, he said, “that’s something we need to do better. . . . I’ll have to eat that one.”

Safety has been a persistent problem for the MTA.

Sinkholes and Mishaps

Although no workers have been killed in the construction of the subway, the project has suffered underground fires, runaway trains, near-escapes from a gaping Hollywood Boulevard sinkhole, the entrapment of a worker in a cement mixer and other accidents that have pointed up systemic safety troubles.

When the federal government pulled its 50% funding of the $5.8-billion subway construction in 1994 after portions of Hollywood Boulevard sank up to 10 inches, the MTA promised that it would better manage the project as a condition of having the money restored.

The authority yanked responsibility for safety away from construction management firms such as JMA, which are in the tunnel at all times, and took on the role itself. But the MTA, despite quintupling the size of its safety team to include 22 staffers, cannot be in the tunnel at all times.

That leaves foremen such as McKnight in charge of safeguarding the health of his miners on an hour by hour basis. “It’s the contractor’s people who are exposed. It’s up to them to check . . . if there are hazards to their employees,” said Jackson, the MTA safety chief.

To see how the system works, a reporter paid two visits 80 feet underground to the miners’ dimly lit world under Studio City, where 60 men in round-the-clock shifts are hacking a passage for the trains that will someday rush commuters Downtown from North Hollywood.

On a March 21 visit of about three hours, the reporter was accompanied by a JMA inspector, who occasionally handed out ear plugs as he went about his main job of checking the miners’ work. It wasn’t until the March 22 visit that safety issues came into focus as miners began to talk more openly about their lives.

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Digging “the hole,” as the miners call the tunnel, is one of the hardest and most dangerous blue-collar jobs in the city. Down there, foremen such as McKnight rule.

The 58-year-old veteran miner is viewed as a tough throwback to a time when men were men and the barkeeps were scared.

Construction firms value his experience and ability to teach his craft to young miners. “The benefit of the old-timers is their knowledge of the hazards,” said John Shea, president of J.F. Shea Co., a Walnut-based tunneling contractor, who hired McKnight in 1958. “They try to watch after the younger guys.”

McKnight’s resume reads like a history of mining in the late 20th century, and he hates to take on jobs he considers “too boring,” such as running the mechanical moles called tunnel-boring machines that will begin to excavate two 21-foot-wide holes through the Santa Monica Mountains next month.

“When we were kids, the only thing between you and the rock was your hat and a little bit of knowledge,” he says. “We used to kill a man a mile.”

In June, McKnight bossed the swing shift for tunneling contractor Shea-Kiewit-Kenny that was re-mining an off-course Red Line tunnel below Hollywood Boulevard when an unusual amount of water started seeping in. The next shift of miners had to run for their lives when the tunnel caved in, leaving a block-long sinkhole near Barnsdall Park.

“That was a hard-luck job the day it started, and it never got any better,” said McKnight.

Tall, profane and undeniably charming, McKnight strides the Studio City tunnel with the commanding air of a workingman’s professor. He prefers this assignment--two “starter” tunnels in soft soil through which the laser-guided tunnel-boring machines will soon trundle en route to their real work of gnawing through bedrock--because they must be dug with the low-tech methods that he has honed over 38 years.

Using hand signals and monosyllabic words that can be understood over the ear-splitting noise, he leads a shift of eight strong men who use big drills called road headers to shave away dirt at a tunnel face in four-foot stretches called “sets.”

The miners then haul the muck out by loader and crane, erect steel ribs to hold the new tunnel section in place, blast liquid concrete onto the dirt and rib as protection, and move on. Much later, another crew will line the excavation with thick, concrete rings.

High Risk, High Pay

The work can leave incautious miners’ lungs impaired and their limbs hobbled. But it is one of the most lucrative in the city for men without college educations. McKnight’s crewmen say they would never think of complaining to union or state safety officials about his hard-driving ways because keeping on the good side of one of the legends of Metro Rail mining can mean nonstop employment at $21.89 an hour. That’s a laboring wage rarely equaled in Los Angeles.

McKnight spoke with an eye-twinkling swagger about his vocation before he let nine people into a metal “mancage” for the long descent by crane into the tunnel. A warning sign on the cage declared it safe for only six.

“You gotta have a lot of want-to, a lot of pride to do this job,” he said in a husky drawl. “You gotta want to walk into a bar and say I’m the best [expletive] miner in this town.”

On a good shift, the Northern California native and his crew can mine two four-foot sets, but on this day, a hydraulic line failed in a machine that shoots “spiles,” or 12-foot reinforcing rods into the earth above the ribs. The repair took over an hour, putting them behind the fast schedule that McKnight prides himself on.

In a hurry then to make speed in what he calls “my little game,” the crew boss kept his men working in the tunnel even after an emergency medical technician working for Traylor Bros. discovered high carbon-monoxide levels emanating from McKnight’s diesel-powered front loader during a routine check of the tunnel.

The tunnel’s ventilation duct was positioned behind the loader, rather than close to the tunnel face, so it blew smoky air--rather than fresh air--at the miners.

Chris Eakman sampled the carbon monoxide at 40 parts per million next to the loader, and 20 at the tunnel face. Eakman--who state records say was then a month away from receiving the gas tester’s license California requires for that job--showed the meter to McKnight. He nodded as they decided to keep working.

“The boys don’t believe me, but the air is fine,” Eakman yelled to McKnight with a smile.

The thick, stinking air was no laughing matter to Robert Santa Cruz, the on-site quality assurance inspector for JMA. He examined the meter too, registered the figure in his log book, and howled at Eakman and McKnight over the din of the loader to halt the work.

State safety rules set a limit of 20 parts per million in tunnels. After that threshold California Tunnel Safety Orders dictate that “corrective measures should be initiated immediately to lower the level.” A Cal/OSHA official said 40 ppm underground is considered a serious danger to miners’ health, something to be “very concerned about.”

A 61-year-old with 40 years of experience in mines, Santa Cruz believes that he should have the authority to demand that work stop until the air clears. In fact, the decision rests with the foreman.

“Dave’s inhuman, he’s a vampire, he has no lungs,” said Santa Cruz, discouraged that his suggestion was ignored. “There’s no man like him in the world.”

Carbon Monoxide Cloud

The frustration deepened when young, mud-covered miner Alex Barajas stopped while running out of the tunnel to holler at Santa Cruz with tears in his eyes: “We couldn’t breathe! Why didn’t you stop him, man? You trying to get us killed?”

Santa Cruz rolled his eyes, condemned the system that allows a contractor to hire its own gas tester, and pointed at his meticulously written log.

“Look at my book: I’ve written McKnight up half a dozen times. Here’s one where the CO level hit 60. Here’s another one at 100. I’ve talked to all the honchos, but no one seems to care. What can I do?”

Another JMA inspector, who asked not to be identified, said he too registered a high carbon monoxide level emanating from the loader on a different shift that day.

McKnight said later that he thought the carbon monoxide level was only 18 parts per million. He acknowledged that the loader was smoking and said he eventually shut it down. “I was sitting right there getting it real bad,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt them kids. I know the perimeters that you can work in.”

Some of the young miners look up to Santa Cruz as one of the few inspectors who will even try to stop an intimidating veteran “shifter,” or foreman, like McKnight. But they recognize mining as a brotherhood of sacrifice, compassion and fear, and don’t really expect him to push too hard.

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Some of the grumbling about safety has had an effect. Gomez and McKnight said Traylor Bros. mechanics fixed the diesel front loader’s carbon monoxide emission problem by repairing its fuel injectors and moving its catalytic converter closer to the engine, where it would be more effective.

It’s less easy to get a fix on determining who is looking out for the workers.

When it comes to air quality, Jackson said that JMA inspectors such as Santa Cruz “do not have a safety role” in the tunnels, noting that they are not certified by the state as gas testers.

He said the medical technician was qualified to perform the gas test because he was under the supervision of a certified gas tester in the Traylor Bros. office.

But Wachter, the Cal/OSHA executive, disagreed, saying that “until a trainee has a certificate, he is not qualified to do the job.”

Work in the tunnels halted for a few days in early April after Caltrans observed that the Hollywood Freeway above them sank 3.79 inches. Digging has since resumed.

And not a moment too soon for McKnight’s crew, who despite the dangers, still love their job.

“My old man was a miner for 35 years, a tunnel tramp all his life,” said miner Walter Byers of New Mexico. “Then one day I got into this and I found it’s a lot of fun.”

Added Gomez: “It is a good job. It’s just not worth getting killed for.”