Verizon: OSHA inspections and violations

Incident on Mar 11, 2002 (fatal): Phone line repairer is electrocuted by power line

On March 11, 2002, Employee #1 and Employee #2 were assigned to replace burned o ut telephone wire and pedestals caused when a storm knocked a tree down onto ove rhead electric power lines. The employees were restringing approximately 1200 ft of 50-pair cable along with a messenger wire. To accomplish the restringing, Em ployee #2 drove the bucket truck down the road while Employee #1 stood in the bu cket and, at each pole, he would place the messenger wire in the mounting bracke ts on the poles. They started at pole 215 (NIMO number). Employee #1 used existi ng mounting brackets except for one needed to be installed on a new pole #216 (N IMO number). When he had restrung messenger wire ending at pole #218 (NIMO numbe r), he began to tension the uninsulated messenger wire using a manually operated chain hoist. Employee #2 was beginning to work on the pedestal mounted at the b ase of the same pole, directly underneath Employee #1, and heard a noise (groan) , looked up, and saw Employee #1 being fatally electrocuted. Burn marks on the m essenger wire and the center overhead phase wire were observed and photographed between poles #215 and #216. Each phase wire carried approximately 6900 volts.

Incident on Feb 2, 2001 (fatal): Employee dies from heart attack while talking on phone

Employee #1, a Verizon employee, died from a heart attack while talking on the p hone to his dispatch office. He was onsite to install phone line for radio broad casting purposes at a church. While talking on a telephone to his dispatch offic e, he collapsed onto the desk. He was not working with any electrical or other e quipment at the time of the collapse. Paramedics who responded stated they thoug ht Employee #1 suffered a heart attack, since he had a history of five previous heart attacks.