Subway Worker Is Killed

A subway construction worker was struck and killed Wednesday by equipment attached to a crane in Universal City, marking the third fatality this year on the Metro Rail project and again raising questions about its employees’ safety.

The 36-year-old mechanic, Brian Bailey of Reseda, was in an 80-foot-deep shaft when he “walked into the path of grippers as they were swinging out to lock on to” a large bucket used to lift large amounts of dirt and rock out of the tunnels, said a Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesman.

The spokesman said investigators are trying to determine why the worker was in a restricted area marked by signs reading, “Danger.” The deaths this year are the first fatalities in the 10-year history of the $6.1-billion subway, the West’s largest public works project.

Construction was halted as investigators from the district attorney’s office and the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) conducted their examination.

Mike Roach, project manager for the tunnel builder, Traylor Bros./Frontier-Kemper, could not offer any explanation for why the worker--who had been on the job for a year and a half--was in a restricted area.

He could not say whether any safety rules were violated other than “he obviously went someplace he shouldn’t have been.”

“I feel terrible,” Roach added. “This is a first for me. And I hope it’s the last.”

The accident immediately sparked questions about the adequacy of the MTA’s oversight of its contractors and their safety programs for construction workers.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina, an MTA board member, said the county transit agency should stop construction of the subway “until every person who enters the tunnels or our construction sites” is assured of a safe work environment. As in the earlier deaths, Molina complained that the agency is blaming the victim, “which seems very inappropriate.”

MTA interim Chief Executive Officer Julian Burke said the agency needs to consolidate safety programs that are “spread all over our organization.”

Although the MTA has responsibility for overseeing the contractors building the subway, Burke emphasized that it is the construction companies that bear the responsibility to ensure a safe work site for their employees.

“We should be talking more to our contractors to see that these issues are being handled properly,” he said.

Charles Stark, MTA construction chief, said the agency is “looking at all aspects of the safety program, which includes safety training and safety awareness provided to employees.”

Traylor Bros./Frontier-Kemper has been running behind schedule and over budget in digging a pair of tunnels to extend the Red Line subway from Hollywood to the San Fernando Valley.

The cross-mountain project has been marred by some accidents. A driver leaped from a runaway underground rock-hauling locomotive in February and a crane operator accidentally dropped a load of rails 80 feet down a shaft in mid-January. No one was injured in either incident.

Traylor Bros./Frontier-Kemper’s rate for injuries that required medical treatment was 23.4 through August--above the national average of 10.6 and higher than the average of 15.9 for all the contractors on the Hollywood-to-North Hollywood segment of the subway project.

The tunnel builder’s rate of injuries that caused lost work days was 1.6 through August--below the national average of 4.2, according to MTA records.

MTA spokesman Marc Littman said the crane operator cannot see the bottom of the pit but communicates by radio with a spotter in the shaft. The spotter had given the go-ahead for the crane operator to hoist the bucket.

“That signal had just been given, when this mechanic walked into the path of grippers,” Littman said.

Bailey was rushed to St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Burbank, where he was pronounced dead.

In February, a laborer died at a Metro Rail construction site in Hollywood after he was hit by a muck bucket hauling thousands of pounds of material out of a subway tunnel, and in July a worker fell 50 feet to his death at the Universal City Station site.

A safety audit was ordered by the MTA board after the February death, but transit agency officials have refused to release its findings, even making board members sign confidentiality agreements.

The family of the first victim, Jaime Pasillas, 52, has filed suit against the MTA and its contractor Tutor-Saliba-Perini. The second worker, Eleazar Montes, 33, a carpenter, was also a Tutor-Saliba-Perini employee.

MTA officials have said their safety record compares favorably with those of other big projects around the country.

“Construction is dangerous work, and no one can guarantee that there will not be accidents,” Burke said in a statement, adding that “safety awareness must be constantly reinforced.”

“It’s just tragic,” said Los Angeles County Supervisor Don Knabe, chairman of the MTA’s construction committee. “Our heart goes out to his family, his friends and co-workers.”

The MTA employs 13 safety engineers who check construction sites on a rotating basis.

Times staff writer Solomon Moore contributed to this story.