In America, the number of workplace deaths has declined — but not for Hispanics.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says worker deaths overall dropped from 6,217 in 1992 to 5,657 in 2007, a reduction of about 8 per cent. Yet Hispanic worker deaths in the same period increased from 533 in 1992 to 937 in 2007, the latest year with set statistics. That’s a rise of  almost 80 per cent in Hispanic workplace deaths.

Larger numbers of Hispanics in the USA’s workforce account for some of the increase, but only a small amount. Since 1998, Hispanics in America’s workforce went from 10.4 per cent to 14 per cent in 2007.

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Are construction crane fatalities officially an epidemic yet? Already this year, people have died in Houston, Oklahoma City, New York City (in two separate accidents) and now Central Texas. And as tragic as those deaths are, the frequency of the calamities is becoming almost as routine as celebrities who can afford chauffeurs being arrested for their own drunk driving. In either case, such events are needless, avoidable and persistent.

The latest such construction crane tragedy occurred Wednesday in Smithville of Bastrop County, about 45 miles southeast of Austin. There, workers were removing steel girders from an old bridge spanning the Colorado River. The idea was to replace the bridge. (more…)

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Less than a week after a construction crane accident claimed the lives of four oil refinery contract workers in Houston, a crane accident in Oklahoma City took the life of an 80-year-old man who was simply an onlooker while a church steeple was being placed.

The man was sitting in the front seat of his car as a steeple was being raised during the building of a new church in Oklahoma City. When the steeple had been lifted about 10 feet off the ground, the crane and its apparatus tipped over, falling on the man’s vehicle and killing him. His wife, who was in the back seat and managed to get out of the car, survived.

This was a much smaller crane than the one which toppled in Houston last Friday. The OKC crane’s boom was only about 80 feet, while the crane which fell at the LyondellBassell refinery at the Houston Ship Channel was 300 feet tall and had a capacity to lift more than a million pounds. (more…)

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What will it take to wake up Texas to its horrific problem with construction crane collapses? Texans like to think of their state as No. 1, but sometimes it’s No. 1 for the wrong reasons, and that’s too often the case with construction crane fatalities.

In 2005 and 2006, Texas led the nation in construction crane fatalities, with a total of 26 for that period, the Associated Press reports. Now Texas has four construction crane fatalities for 2008, after Friday’s collapse of a 300-foot construction crane at the LyondellBasell refinery at the Houston Ship Channel. Seven others were injured.
Did this accident have to happen? No. Almost by definition, no accident “has” to happen, and all accidents are preventable. In this case, it seems laws and regulations are extremely loose concerning the kind of towering construction cranes which collapsed in Houston and the two which collapsed earlier this year in New York City, killing nine people there. (more…)

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