Accident Revives Question: Is State Lax in Regulating Cranes?

The circumstances of Thursday’s fatal San Diego Freeway crane accident, in which several witnesses said that the crane was not properly stabilized, raises again the question of whether construction cranes are sufficiently inspected and regulated.

Such accidents have occurred numerous times throughout California, often with tragic results. But the issue began to receive more widespread attention in the wake of a San Francisco accident last Nov. 28 in which a crane plunged 19 stories to the ground, killing five people.

A subsequent inspection of nine other cranes operating in San Francisco by the state’s worker safety agency, Cal/OSHA, resulted in six of the cranes being shut down for violating safety standards. One of the cranes in violation was operated by the same company that operated the fallen crane, Swinerton & Walberg, and was located only three blocks from the crash site.

Cal/OSHA is still investigating the cause of that crash as well as Thursday’s accident, in which a construction crane loading material onto a flatbed truck near the San Diego Freeway toppled onto the vehicle’s cab, crushing the driver to death.

Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), chairman of the Assembly Labor and Employment Committee, who earlier this week said he will introduce legislation to more tightly regulate cranes, on Thursday criticized the fact that Cal/OSHA had cited the operator of the crane involved in the San Diego Freeway incident several times during the last 10 years but never imposed a fine. A Cal/OSHA spokesman said none of the crane citations were categorized as “serious.”

Last week, the state Senate Industrial Relations Committee approved a bill by Sen. Bill Greene (D-Los Angeles) requiring licensing of crane operators through a new state Crane Licensing Board. The same proposal has periodically been offered in the Legislature since the mid-1980s without success. The bill would require written examinations and field tests for crane operators.

In Los Angeles, crane operators have been required since 1964 to pass a test and be licensed.

Hayden’s legislation, written to supplement Greene’s, would require safety inspections of cranes to be performed more frequently and more independently.

Currently, high-rise cranes, which must be certified when they are erected and then annually if they are still on the job, can be certified by private inspectors designated by Cal/OSHA. However, these inspectors are often employees of crane manufacturers or have financial ties to them, critics say.

“The self-certification process must be replaced,” said San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos.

The San Francisco crane accident also triggered a call by Jack Henning, executive secretary of the California Labor Federation, for joint legislative hearings on whether Gov. George Deukmejian’s Administration has acted in good faith in restoring Cal/OSHA.

The agency stopped operating for 18 months because of Deukmejian budget cuts. It was revived by a 1988 voter initiative. Cal/OSHA’s current chief, Robert Stranberg, signed the sample ballot argument against that initiative.

Meanwhile, a House subcommittee that has spent years examining weaknesses in the federal government’s regulation of workplace safety has scheduled a Feb. 15 hearing in San Francisco to question why there are no federal or state standards for operators of cranes and why inspection programs have been non-existent or minimal.

Lisa Phillips, a staff member of the House subcommittee on employment and housing, said the San Francisco crane accident “is an awfully good illustration” of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s lack of oversight.

OSHA’s congressional critics are expected later this month to introduce a bill to substantially increase the maximum fine for employer negligence leading to a fatality to $500,000 from the current $1,000. The legislation would also impose the first criminal penalties for non-fatal accidents caused by neglect or reckless endangerment.

Crane accidents have become a periodic occurrence in Southern California. Among those in recent years:

- A worker was seriously injured last June when a hook-and-ball assembly fell from a crane at the National Steel & Shipbuilding Co. in San Diego.

- An 80-foot crane collapsed atop a high-rise building under construction in Century City last June. No one was injured.

- A large hydraulic crane fell on its side at a Glendale construction site twice in two days in mid-1988, slightly injuring the operator on one occasion.

- A crane accident at National Steel & Shipbuilding Co. killed six workers and injured six others in 1987.

- A falling crane crushed its designer in the Harbor City area in 1987.

- One man was killed and another injured when a crane they were operating on a Universal Studios sound stage fell on them in 1986.

- A crane accident at a high-rise office tower under construction in downtown Los Angeles in 1985 killed three workers. The prime contractor was Swinerton & Walberg. The contractor was also involved in a 1981 crane collapse at Bunker Hill downtown that killed two people.