Safety Violations

Sitting in a wheelchair at a nursing home, Brian Buber can't recall the instant 17 years ago when tons of screaming metal came rocketing toward him on the Capital Beltway, scattering fellow construction workers and crushing their paving equipment. In 1997, a civil jury found Hanover-based Gunther's Leasing Transport Inc. negligent in the accident, which killed one person and injured seven, awarding them nearly $16 million in damages and medical expenses. Buber, 49, crippled and with severe brain damage, received some insurance money but "never saw a penny" of the $13 million earmarked by the jury for his care, says his stepfather, Bob Buber.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has charged Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant with a safety violation after an employee "deliberately became inattentive" — meaning he was caught napping — last year in the room housing diesel generators for use in an emergency. Kory Raftery, spokesman for Constellation Energy Nuclear Group, said Tuesday the employee was promptly dismissed after a supervisor discovered him, and the company does not intend to challenge the NRC's findings. The federal agency said it appeared to be an isolated incident and classified the infraction as of very low safety significance.

State labor officials imposed a record $1 million fine Friday on an Eastern Shore poultry processor that inspectors say has ignored warnings to improve a dangerous workplace for more than a decade. The penalty against Allen Family Foods Inc. is the largest ever levied in a single inspection by the Maryland Occupational Safety and Health division of the state Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, officials said. Inspectors say they found 51 violations at Allen's large processing plant in Hurlock while investigating a December incident in which a worker was seriously injured.

Sitting in a wheelchair at a nursing home, Brian Buber can't recall the instant 17 years ago when tons of screaming metal came rocketing toward him on the Capital Beltway, scattering fellow construction workers and crushing their paving equipment. In 1997, a civil jury found Hanover-based Gunther's Leasing Transport Inc. negligent in the accident, which killed one person and injured seven, awarding them nearly $16 million in damages and medical expenses. Buber, 49, crippled and with severe brain damage, received some insurance money but "never saw a penny" of the $13 million earmarked by the jury for his care, says his stepfather, Bob Buber.

CRAIGSVILLE, W.Va. -- In its drive to foster a more cooperative relationship with mining companies, the Bush administration has decreased major fines for safety violations since 2001, and in nearly half the cases, it has not collected the fines, according to a data analysis by The New York Times. Federal records also show that in the past two years the federal mine safety agency has failed to hand over any delinquent cases to the Treasury Department for further collection efforts, as is supposed to occur after 180 days.

An Alabama-based trucking company said yesterday that it has completed its acquisition of George Transfer, the Baltimore County firm that was closed by federal authorities last month after being cited for hundreds of safety violations.Malone Freight Lines Inc., of Birmingham, Ala., bought the Parkton-based company's customer contacts and has assumed working arrangements with major metal manufacturers such as Bethlehem Steel Corp. and Alcoa, said John Smith, president and chief executive officer of CRST International Inc., Malone's parent company.

Charging that a Baltimore County trucking company failed to correct unsafe practices, federal highway officials yesterday ordered it to halt nearly all of its operations -- the largest trucker ever shut down for safety violations.Parkton-based George Transfer Inc., which operates terminals in 24 states, was cited yesterday for more than 430 alleged violations of federal regulations, including charges that it required its drivers to falsify logs designed to keep exhausted truckers off the road.

The Maryland Occupational Safety and Health agency has recommended a $7,875 fine against a Baltimore crane company accused of safety violations in a parking garage under construction in Westminster that partially collapsed, sending part of a 30-ton concrete deck crashing to the ground and injuring three workers. Representatives with E.E. Marr Erectors Inc., the crane company working on the $2.85 million parking garage going up in the Longwell parking lot between City Hall and Main Street, are scheduled to meet Thursday with state inspectors to contest the findings in the MOSH report dated May 13. "These violations have nothing to do with the cause of the accident.

Fines for job safety violations would jump sevenfold under legislation introduced to bring Maryland's penalty scale into line with recently raised federal fines.The scale of fines enforced by the Maryland Occupational Safety and Health office has been frozen at the current level since the agency's formation in 1973, despite repeated assertions by safety advocates that higher penalties would help reduce workplace violations.The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced in October that it would increase its maximum fines sevenfold -- to $7,000 for "serious" violations and $70,000 for "willful" violations.

The state has halted the admission of patients to Northwest Nursing and Convalescent Center, citing the Pimlico-area nursing home for serious deficiencies in patient care."

The report from Maryland Occupational Safety and Health (MOSH), this state's workplace safety enforcement agency, cites the Department of Juvenile Services for five serious safety violations in the aftermath of Ms. Hannah Wheeling's murder at the hand of one of her students ("Employees broke safety protocol the day teacher was killed," Aug. 21). Yet the recommendations to DJS might as well be stamped "Keep Up Business as Usual". The MOSH report cites the Department of Juvenile Services' existing safety protocols as sufficient to prevent future homicides of staff by residents when they are followed.

State labor officials imposed a record $1 million fine Friday on an Eastern Shore poultry processor that inspectors say has ignored warnings to improve a dangerous workplace for more than a decade. The penalty against Allen Family Foods Inc. is the largest ever levied in a single inspection by the Maryland Occupational Safety and Health division of the state Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, officials said. Inspectors say they found 51 violations at Allen's large processing plant in Hurlock while investigating a December incident in which a worker was seriously injured.

A man who died after falling from scaffolding Tuesday was working for a company that has a history of helmet and safety violations, according to records. Emilio Ernesto Herrera, 42, of Silver Spring was pronounced dead at a Harford County warehouse after authorities were called to the scene about 1:45 p.m. Tuesday. Herrera was working for a masonry company, building a cinder-block wall in an old appliance warehouse on Appliance Drive in Belcamp, said Sgt.

Baltimore officials yesterday condemned the stable housing more than 50 ponies the city's a-rabs use to sell produce because of code violations and unsafe conditions that threatened the safety of the animals. City officials will meet with the a-rabs at 1 p.m. today to inform them that the ponies must be moved and to discuss possible short- and long-term solutions. A-rabs are produce vendors who sell their wares along city streets from horse-drawn carts - often announcing their presence with shouts.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. --Safety violations that went uncorrected cost two coal miners their lives in a fire on a mine conveyer belt in January, a state report has found. The deaths, at the Aracoma Alma No.1 Mine in southern West Virginia, came just two weeks after 12 men were killed in an accident at the Sago Mine in the northern part of the state. Investigators have found that a previous fire at Aracoma Alma No. 1 went unreported and that a fire alarm did not work, a critical wall was missing, a water line had no water in it and an automatic fire sprinkler was broken.

CRAIGSVILLE, W.Va. -- In its drive to foster a more cooperative relationship with mining companies, the Bush administration has decreased major fines for safety violations since 2001, and in nearly half the cases, it has not collected the fines, according to a data analysis by The New York Times. Federal records also show that in the past two years the federal mine safety agency has failed to hand over any delinquent cases to the Treasury Department for further collection efforts, as is supposed to occur after 180 days.

The state has fined Bethlehem Steel Corp. $4,995 for safety violations involving lift trucks at the Sparrows Point complex, vehicles implicated in the deaths of two workers over the past three years.The Maryland Occupational Safety and Health office issued the citations after investigations prompted by complaints by the Steelworkers union and by the Oct. 1 death of David Hamlett, an inventory checker in the tin mill who was crushed between a runaway tractor and a 50,000-pound coil of steel.

The Maryland Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that state labor officials correctly applied safety laws when they cited Bethlehem Steel Corp. after a 1991 accident that killed a worker at the Sparrows Point plant.The ruling, prompted by Bethlehem Steel's court challenge to the citation, is expected to make it easier for state labor officials to crack down on safety violations involving barriers for heavy equipment in Maryland industries."It will make it easier for MOSH [the Maryland Occupational Safety and Health program]

WASHINGTON -- Since the Bush administration took office in 2001, it has been more lenient toward mining companies facing serious safety violations, issuing fewer and smaller major fines and collecting less than half of the money that violators owed, a Knight Ridder Newspapers investigation has found. At one point last year, the Mine Safety and Health Administration fined a coal company a scant $440 for a "significant and substantial" violation that ended in the death of a Kentucky man. The firm, International Coal Group Inc., is the same company that owns the Sago Mine in West Virginia, where 12 workers died last week.

The Maryland Occupational Safety and Health agency has recommended a $7,875 fine against a Baltimore crane company accused of safety violations in a parking garage under construction in Westminster that partially collapsed, sending part of a 30-ton concrete deck crashing to the ground and injuring three workers. Representatives with E.E. Marr Erectors Inc., the crane company working on the $2.85 million parking garage going up in the Longwell parking lot between City Hall and Main Street, are scheduled to meet Thursday with state inspectors to contest the findings in the MOSH report dated May 13. "These violations have nothing to do with the cause of the accident.