Safety plans for bridge road workers remain unclear
“The most fundamental right a worker has in every workplace is the right to come home. That right eluded them.”
— Tom Perez, the former Maryland Secretary of Labor
As investigators work to determine the cause of a ship’s collision with the Francis Scott Key Bridge that toppled the span, questions persist about what safety measures were in place before the crash that killed six construction workers.
The workers, all employees of Hunt Valley-based firm Brawner Builders Inc., were filling potholes shortly before 1:30 a.m. March 26, when police officers with the Maryland Transportation Authority received a warning that a cargo vessel had lost power and might collide with the structure.
They shut down vehicle traffic across the bridge, but it’s not clear whether they notified the work crew.
The Baltimore Sun obtained a copy of Brawner Builders’ 82-page safety policy. The company, which is not unionized, said in its policy that it provides guardrails on walkways and bridge projects where people and equipment must cross over excavations, but does not mention any protections for projects near or over waterways like the Key Bridge. Federal labor regulators previously investigated and cited the company four times for failing to protect its workers against falls, and have fined Brawner Builders almost $11,000 since 2018.
Federal labor law also requires that at least one safety skiff be “immediately available” where employees are working over or adjacent to water.
According to the Key Bridge Joint Information Center, there appeared to be no skiffs under the bridge.
“From what was gathered, there were no safety skiffs out,” the information center said via email. “Workers were repairing potholes and not working over the side.”
The company has used safety vessels previously, according to court documents from a personal injury case brought by a former employee in 2011. Dino Kalandras said he suffered an injury while working on a Brawner Builders vessel, but was told Brawner Builders’ insurance did not cover his injuries because he was not listed as a crew member at the time.
The case was later settled, according to court records.
Jeffrey Pritzker, Brawner Builders’ executive vice president, declined to answer questions about the company’s safety protocols, including whether there was a safety boat present at the Key Bridge, citing an ongoing investigation led by the National Transportation Safety Board.
The company’s safety director, Pat Hart, did not respond to a request for comment.
Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, has praised transportation authority police officers for their quick response, which he said saved oncoming motorists from crossing the bridge before it collapsed. Those calls did not reach the construction workers, who are presumed to have died when they fell in the Patapsco River. Divers recovered the bodies of two men, Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes and Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, but four more remain missing.
The pilot onboard the Singapore-flagged container ship Dali issued a mayday call less than three minutes before the ship crashed into one of the bridge’s main support columns.
Pritzker declined to say whether Brawner Builders believed the Dali’s owner and manager are responsible for its workers’ deaths. Those companies filed earlier this week in federal court to limit their liability, and Pritzker said the litigation means it will take “many years” to reach a resolution. The accident could be the largest-ever financial maritime loss.
Pritzker and the Maryland Transportation Authority could not provide copies Wednesday of the specific contract or safety plan that the company’s workers were operating under at the time of the collision. Brawner Builders has held at least 21 contracts with the Maryland Department of Transportation since 2019, according to a public contracts database.
A spokesperson for the Maryland Occupational Safety and Health agency said via email that it would release a copy of the company’s specific safety plan after it concludes its investigation, which could take up to six months.
Brawner Builders’ most recent contract, according to the database, with the Maryland Transportation Authority, which began Jan. 31, was to provide on-call highway and road paving services. The value is $12.5 million and the contract ends in January 2028. It wasn’t immediately clear whether that contract included the Key Bridge work.
The Brawner Builders construction workers working on the Key Bridge were employed as a sevenman team to fill potholes at the time of the collapse. One crew member survived the fall, along with a state bridge inspector who was contracted with Eborn Enterprises, according to Carter Elliott IV, the governor’s spokesperson.
The Key Bridge workers’ shift started at 9 p.m., though they arrived beforehand to set up crash attenuators and traffic cones. They were expected to finish before 5 a.m., according to Pritzker.
The deaths of the six Brawner Builders workers is the second accident that claimed the lives of Maryland construction workers in the year since two vehicles traveling at top speeds collided while on Interstate 695 in March 2023, killing six highway construction workers.
Tom Perez, the former Maryland Secretary of Labor and a senior adviser to Democratic President Joe Biden, cited that accident and pledged for the federal government to “get to the bottom” of what caused the Dali collision and claimed the Brawner Builders’ workers’ lives.
“The most fundamental right a worker has in every workplace is the right to come home. That right eluded them,” Perez said. “An acceptable number of deaths is zero. That’s the only acceptable number of deaths for construction workers.”
Brawner Builders’ insurance company is covering the survivors’ medical bills and the company will pay for grief counseling and compensate employees’ families as workers’ compensation claims are being processed. In addition, the company is crowdfunding via GoFundMe to raise $300,000, all of which will go toward their employees’ widows and surviving children.
“No one is missing any paychecks,” Pritzker said.
The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration has cited Brawner Builders seven times, including four safety violations, and has fined the company a total of $10,775 since 2018, according to online records.
The most recent violation before the bridge collapse was in October 2021, when OSHA issued two violations related to not providing fall protection during a site inspection at Talbott Springs Elementary School in Oakland Mills in Columbia. The two violations came with a $5,600 penalty.