Clyde Jones Died on the Job. He Didn’t Have To. Here’s Why.

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/05/25/clyde-jones-died-on-the-job-he-didnt-have-to-heres-why/

Clyde Jones Died on the Job. He Didn’t Have To. Here’s Why.

by Mike Hall, May 25, 2007

Clyde Jones was one of more than 8 million local and state workers not covered by the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA). That may have cost him his life.

In 2004, Jones was part of a work crew repairing a hurricane-damaged roof at a Daytona Beach waste water plant. The workers didn’t know that highly flammable dangerous gases were escaping from holding tanks directly below the roof.

His widow, Casey Jones, told a House subcommittee yesterday:

He had no knowledge of the dangers associated with these tanks he worked around every day for the last seven years, because there had never been any safety meetings for him and other workers. He did not know of the dangerous gases which were escaping because he was never advised such a situation existed, nor were there warning signs or other precautions given to him.…As the lighted torch cut through the metal, the gases coming from the vent exploded into a horrible fireball.

The next day, with third-degree burns covering more than 90 percent of his body, Clyde Jones died.

Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), chairman of the Education and Labor Workforce Protections Subcommittee, which held the oversight hearing on the absence of OSHA protection for public workers, says an investigation into the Daytona Beach blast shows it shouldn’t have happened if OSHA standards had been followed:

This incident caught the attention of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, and it decided to investigate precisely because the employees of the City of Daytona Beach, such as Mr. Jones, were not covered by OSHA.…In the accident involving Mr. Jones, the board found that several OSHA standards had been violated, standards that if followed, would have prevented the explosion.

FULL story at link.