Henry William Gray, 56, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Monday, May 2 while working at an excavation site in Denver, Iowa. The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier reports:
- The incident occurred at about 11:30 am.
- “Crews were doing excavating work when a wall collapsed.”
- The location is a “historic two-story brick commercial building…which has been under renovation the past couple of years.”
KWWL indicates:
- “Snelling Construction was excavating a long foundation wall. ….A portion of the foundation wall tipped over…”
Using OSHA’s on-line database, it does not appear that the Iowa State OSHA program has conducted any inspections involving Snelling Construction, at least since 2000.
The AFL-CIO’s 2016 Death on the Job report notes:
Iowa-OSHA has 19 inspectors to cover more than 80,000 workplaces. With that number of inspectors, it would take 163 years for Iowa-OSHA to inspect each workplace in the State just once.
- The average penalty for a serious violation in Iowa is $997.
- The median penalty amount for a work-related fatality occurring in Iowa is $3,000.
Iowa-OSHA has until early November 2016 to issue any citations and penalties related to the incident that stole the life of Henry William Gray. It’s likely Iowa-OSHA will determine that his death was preventable. It was no “accident.”