A Lifetime Spent Stuck in Traffic

Construction worker Art Meltvedt darted onto Santiago Canyon Road on Thursday morning, looking suddenly small in his orange T-shirt and safety glasses. He waved his hard hat furiously to stop oncoming traffic so a massive crane could cross the road at the Eastern Transportation Corridor construction site.

The first car halted 50 feet away, and others stopped with a squeal of brakes on the downhill slope. A speeding sport utility vehicle fishtailed, then swerved into another lane--luckily, there was no traffic in its path. Meltvedt, having accomplished his mission, sprinted off the road, and traffic began moving again. But the driver of a black Lincoln sedan had a little goodbye present for the highway worker.

“Did you see that lady? She just flipped me off,” Meltvedt said incredulously. “We’re not even human, we’re just out here in their way.”

Highway construction workers like Meltvedt do their jobs in a danger zone. That fact was illustrated dramatically this week by a pair of multi-car crashes on Orange County freeways near Anaheim that killed an Irvine woman and injured more than 15 other people.

No one has been charged in either accident--one on the Santa Ana Freeway and the other on the Artesia Freeway, both involving trucks that could not stop in time to avoid striking vehicles stuck in traffic jams.

A 24-year-old woman remained in critical condition Thursday at UCI Medical Center in Orange with a head injury, a punctured lung and a lacerated liver. Also at UCI, a 23-year-old Fresno woman was in fair condition with head injuries.

Two accident victims at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Orange were in stable condition. Another person was at Western Medical Center.

None of the injured in the two crashes were highway workers, but statistics show that the people in such jobs are constantly in jeopardy.

“It’s always dangerous when you have to work within a few feet of live traffic,” said Pam Gorniak, a spokeswoman for Caltrans, which employs thousands of road workers statewide.

In the last 10 years, she said, about 6,800 people have been killed in roadwork-zone crashes nationwide, many of them highway workers. In 1996--the last year for which statistics are available--6,085 accidents occurred in California highway construction areas, about 3.7% of the total statewide.

Workers say the hazard is greatest at night, when most road construction is done.

“Anything can happen,” said Carlos Velasco, 50, working at midnight Thursday along the Santa Ana Freeway, near one of the big-rig accident sites. Like most of those on the freeway expansion project, Velasco is employed by a private construction company that works for Caltrans.

“One little mistake,” he said, “and that’s all she wrote. It’s like playing with a loaded gun--we always feel like one of us going to get killed.”

Richard Scott, 30, shares that concern.

“You don’t know who’s behind the wheel,” he said of the cars whizzing by at better than 65 mph. “It could be a 15-year-old or a drunk--people really don’t care. They’ll flip you off, break down your barriers, throw Coke cans at you.”

The really scary time, Scott said, begins about 2 a.m. when the bars close. “You see lots of people intoxicated. Mainly you feel unsafe because you realize that out of every 10 cars that go by, probably three of the drivers don’t even know that you’re there. That’s kind of scary.”

Scott said he makes safety a personal quest: He tries to keep a safe distance from the traffic, faces it whenever possible and stays as close to the heavy equipment as he can.

“I figure it would make a good barrier,” he said. “I’m also very careful with my footing so I don’t slip and fall. It only takes a second for an accident to happen.”

Crews take several steps to help ensure workers’ safety. Workers wear hard hats and bright-orange vests. Work areas are usually illuminated by powerful lights that make the area almost as bright as day. And, most important, Caltrans routinely erects 2 1/2-foot-tall concrete barriers--called K-rails--between the workers and the traffic.

In addition, signs warn drivers of construction ahead. In the case of Wednesday’s accident on the Santa Ana Freeway, where construction was in progress, the first caution sign was 3,300 feet before the offramp being used to detour drivers around the work site, Gorniak said.

That’s 300 feet farther from the detour than Caltrans rules require, Gorniak said.

“We are doing everything we can,” she said, to protect workers. “But we need the cooperation of motorists.”

Caltrans recently initiated a statewide campaign urging drivers to use caution and obey posted speed limits when passing through highway construction zones, she said. “These people out on the freeway are my friends, and I know how I would feel if any one of them were injured or killed because of an errant driver going through a work zone.”

Chuck Piper, 43, who supervises a nine-member crew along the Santa Ana Freeway every night from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m., appreciates the state’s safety efforts. “When you’re behind a K-rail it’s OK,” he said. “The crews watch out for each other. It’s like a baseball team--everybody watches everybody’s back.”

And, despite the hazards, some workers prefer the night shift. “It has its good points,” said Clarence Rogers, 31. “It pays well, plus it’s away from the heat, and you can sleep all day in an air-conditioned apartment.”