Construction safety checks spotty
Published Friday November 13th, 2009
Danger: Inquest into man's death hears safety inspectors are not informed about new buildings
SAINT JOHN - A safety inspection that likely would have saved the life of 73-year-old Domenico Ranieri was scheduled for the same day he fell the equivalent of two storeys to his death.
Ron Buchanan, a health and safety officer with WorkSafe NB, was one of several witnesses that testified at a coroner's inquest Thursday afternoon in the Sydney Street court house.
Buchanan said on Sunday, Oct. 19, 2008, he was driving down Rothesay Avenue to do some shopping when he noticed a large structure being built.
The next morning Buchanan said he went to the construction site at 533 Rothesay Ave. to conduct a safety inspection, but no one was there. Buchanan said he decided to go to another call and stop back at the site afterward.
Before he made it back, his phone rang with news of the accident, he said.
He said if he had arrived before Ranieri had fallen and saw him and employee Charles Israel working without hard hats, steel toe boots and safety harnesses, he would have asked them to safely get on the ground and then issued an immediate stop-work order.
The safety officer told the five-person jury that Ranieri had been constructing a storage shed with an old-style pulley system instead of a crane. He had been using the pulley system to lift 500-pound roof trusses onto the structure. He said Ranieri put the braces on the trusses with a single nail, the lumber used was an insufficient size and length, and the trusses were perpendicular instead of diagonal.
Buchanan said those practices do not comply with manufacturer or industry standards.
On the day of the accident, Ranieri noticed the roof trusses were slanted so he went to the top of the structure with his employee to fix it, Buchanan said. When he took a nail out, the trusses toppled, throwing both men to the ground
Ranieri fell 18.5 feet, face-first into the rocks. A doctor testified he died of injuries resulting from the fall. Buchanan said Israel fell feet-first into the mud and did not sustain serious injury.
The jury watched a blurry surveillance video from a nearby business that captured the two men in mid-air.
Domenico Ranieri Jr. had to stop his testimony several times to cry as he described the father he loved and the day he died.
Ranieri Jr. said his father was originally from Italy where he had learned masonry through persistence and hard work as a young man. He said at 25 his dad immigrated to Canada and set up shop. He made his legacy in the Port City overseeing construction of Market Square in the early 80's and eventually owned three businesses, Ranieri Jr. said.
He said he didn't know one person who could keep up with his dad.
"In the old country you put your tail between your legs and work," Ranieri Jr. said through tears. "When you come from a poor background you work hard."
Ranieri Jr. said he had just eaten breakfast with his sister and niece when he got a call that his father had been in an accident.
He was in disbelief.
He said he ran down to the site and saw that the trusses on the building had collapsed and then he saw his father lying face down on the ground.
Ranieri Jr. turned to the jury and said that a lot of people knew his father and thought he was quite competent. He said WorkSafe NB, the city of Saint John and the engineering firm that worked on the design of the building were all involved in the project, and yet this accident still happened.
"If they suspected he was doing something wrong why wasn't it stopped?" he asked. "Wasn't WorkSafe NB ever notified?"
Buchanan later said it wasn't.
He said construction companies are not required to notify WorkSafe NB when beginning a job. He said when inspectors spot construction sites they decide on their own whether to do an inspection. The Sunday before the incident was the first time he saw the construction site at 533 Rothesay Ave.
David Crawford, deputy building inspector with the city of Saint John, said Ranieri was granted permits to construct the building and an inspector visited the site a dozen times. He said the last time the inspector visited before the incident the trusses were not on site.
Crawford said it is not the job of building inspectors to check for safety. He said inspectors look at the finished work and not the process.
He said each time a building permit is issued a copy is sent to Service NB. He said it would not be a problem to send a copy to Worksafe NB, however, that is not current practice.
The inquest is meant to look into the death of Ranieri and get information that may prevent deaths in similar situations. It is being led by acting chief coroner Greg Forestell with Chris Titus as counsel to the coroner.
The inquest is scheduled to continue this morning at 9:15 a.m.
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