The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited Texas contractor Hurtado Construction Co. on March 15 after an 18-year-old worker died in a trench collapse last September. OSHA proposed $257,811 in fines.
The employee, who OSHA did not name, was working on a 12-foot-deep trench for a water and sewer facility on Sept. 15 in Fulshear, Texas. While the employee was installing a geotextile fabric on a reinforced concrete pipe joint at 4:09 p.m., a trench side wall collapsed on top of him. Tons of dirt trapped him between the pipe and a reinforced concrete box, and he died of crushing injuries and asphyxiation, OSHA records show.
OSHA issued one deliberate citation and six serious citations to Brookshire, Texas-based Hurtado. Officials say the contractor didn’t have someone available to provide first aid on the job, didn’t provide a ladder for quick escape, had employees work in a ditch where water was pooling and the soil was saturated, improperly used a reinforced concrete box as a protection system outside of the manufacturer’s specifications, failed to install shields flush with the trench walls, and exposed employees to collapse hazards.
Hurtado did not return ENR’s calls about the incident.
Larissa Ipsen, OSHA’s Houston area director, said in a statement that Hurtado “has routinely ignored his legal responsibility to protect the safety and health of employees.”
“The company’s callousness has cost a young man his life and left his family, friends and co-workers to suffer a terrible tragedy in circumstances that were completely avoidable,” Ipsen said.
OSHA has cited Hurtado on at least five other occasions since 2015, records show. Most recently before that, inspectors said they found Hurtado was not using proper collapse protection in November 2021 at a dig in Katy, Texas.
Officials said another Hurtado employee was killed in January 2007 when a co-worker began backfilling an excavation while the employee was still in the trench. And in the years since, OSHA has cited the company after inspectors found employees working without proper precautions in excavations where water pooled and other hazards, including a lack of protection against collapse and materials piled up in the near a ditch where they could fall and hit the workers. , records show.
After receiving OSHA’s notice, Hurtado has 15 days to comply, request an informal conference or contest the findings.
