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Two workers were not using safety equipment available at the scene Monday when they drowned in more than a foot of watery sewage as noxious chemicals permeated the area, Des Moines city officials said Tuesday.
Inspectors with the city's engineering department said they had seen air monitors, fresh-air pumps and two-way radios at the east-side site where Insituform Technologies was completing repairs on five miles of a deteriorating sewer system.
Company officials based in Chesterfield, Mo., said it's standard procedure for its crews to use the safety tools in subterranean jobs because of the dangerous gases produced by sewage.
But rescuers who pulled workers out of a 15-foot pit Monday afternoon said the two men who died, dressed in jeans and T- shirts, had only hard hats and lights in the oxygen-short environment.
"To my knowledge, there were not any respiration devices provided," said Acting Fire Chief Doug Rubin. "By the time we were able to pull them to the surface, too much time had elapsed to revive life."
The crew's foreman, Kent Broz, said from his hospital bed Tuesday that the breathing devices were not used because the workers thought the site was safe and adequately ventilated.
Daniel Grasshoff, 25, and Brian Burford, 19, Insituform employees from the St. Louis area, were pronounced dead at the scene. Authorities suspect that the workers inadvertently stirred up low-lying hydrogen sulfide, a noxious byproduct of sewage, and fell unconscious from the fumes.
Co-workers on the surface came to Grasshoff's and Burford's aid, but were also stricken as they worked to pull the men out. The co-workers, firefighters and employees at nearby Nesbit Distributing Co., 1901 Dewolf St., rescued five Insituform workers.
"All your training says, "Don't go in," " said Jeff Hansen, a city of Des Moines project manager overseeing the sewer project. "But the human side says, "That's your buddy." I have a feeling that's what happened" when the co-workers went in after the first two men.
Federal guidelines call for a number of safeguards at underground construction sites, but some of those guidelines were apparently not followed, city officials said. According to rules set by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, workers in confined spaces more than 5 feet deep must be in constant contact with workers on the surface and tethered by lifelines that can pull them to safety at a moment's notice.
Officials with the Des Moines Fire Department and Polk County medical examiner's office said neither Grasshoff nor Burford appeared to have been hooked to a harness or ankle strap. City inspectors said the harnesses would have been difficult to wear if the workers were walking through the 5- foot-high sewers.
Hansen said a foreman told him that Grasshoff and Burford had collapsed after returning from a trip through the concrete structure. Officials with the medical examiner's office said they splashed face-down into 1 to 2 feet of standing water and sewage.
"From what they tell me, the two guys had just walked 100 feet down the line," Hansen said. "They were standing in the open-air pit talking when this took place."
OSHA guidelines call for the use of constant air monitoring and fresh-air pumps that can immediately infuse a hole with oxygen. Fire crews said they discovered an air monitor at the site, but it wasn't clear whether it had simply been used prior to the workers' entrance.
City engineers who periodically monitor the progress of the $9 million sewer rehabilitation project said the job seemed to be going off without a hitch. While city officials said they aren't responsible for ensuring contractors" safety, they said they never noticed deficiencies in Insituform's procedures.
"These guys were well-trained professionals. They weren't in their swimsuits diving into the sewers," said senior construction inspector Chester Van Buskirk.
Iowa OSHA officials officially were called to the scene late Monday. The agency is serving as the lead investigator into the deaths.
"Essentially, what we're looking for are violations of OSHA standards that may have contributed to the accident," said administrator Mary Bryant. "If it's determined that (the pit) is a confined space, we'll be looking at what kind of training they had, air monitoring, personal protection and ventilation."
If OSHA determines that Insituform willfully ignored safety procedures, investigators could ask the Polk County attorney to file a criminal misdemeanor against workers responsible for the lapse.
Insituform spokeswoman Michele Lucas said top company officials were interviewing those of the 15 workers in Des Moines who were not injured in the accident. Lucas said the company has an excellent safety record and is baffled by the incident.
"We don't want to point any fingers right now," she said. "We're trying to get the facts and find out what went wrong."
Federal OSHA officials have cited the company with 23 health and safety violations since 1986, including two serious violations over the past nine months, officials said. Those two violations resulted in nearly $6,000 in fines for safety lapses at job sites in St. Paul, Minn., and Boston.
OSHA officials were unable to provide details on the incidents.
Insituform employs 1,500 workers on sewer and pipe projects across the country and in western Europe. Company officials said their last worker fatality occurred in Puerto Rico in 1992.
Steve Spangler, an OSHA-trained safety manager for Scheck Mechanical Corp. in Countryside, Ill., said even well- trained crews can get lackadaisical about safety procedures.
"These firms may do 100 of those things, and maybe in two or three of them, there's gas present," Spangler said. "A lot of times, they will just depend on fellows saying, "Hey, it smells like rotten eggs down here." Crews that work like that are going to run into situations where they find guys at the bottom of a pit, as sad as that is."
Hydrogen sulfide gives off a scent of rotten eggs, but the chemical also deadens a person's ability to identify the scent for long. Spangler said a four-gas monitor typically used in sewer projects would have detected the toxin in time for workers to respond.
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