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After six months of investigating, federal investigators said the company that was building a hangar at the Boise Airport engaged in an “appalling disregard of safety standards” before the hangar collapsed, killing three men.
Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspectors found that Big D Builders, the Meridian contractor, “ignored standard safety procedures and visible warning signs during construction,” the U.S. Department of Labor, which includes OSHA, said in a news release Monday .
“The tragic loss and pain suffered by so many is compounded by the fact that Big D Builders could have prevented all of this from happening,” David Kearns, Boise’s OSHA area director, said in the release. “We cannot put a value on the loss of life, but we will use all our resources to hold employers accountable when they willfully ignore safety regulations and expose workers to serious and fatal injuries.”
The hangar collapsed Jan. 31 while crews were building a 43-foot tall, 39,000-square-foot engineered steel hangar for the Jackson Jet Center. Three people were killed: Big D Builders co-founder Craig Durrant and two construction workers, Mario Sontay Tzi and Mariano “Alex” Coc Och. The Boise Police Department said nine people were injured, while the OSHA report said “at least eight” were.
“Given the pending lawsuit, we have no comment on the report or its findings,” Big D Builders said in an emailed statement.
OSHA recommended that Big D be fined nearly $200,000 for four violations — one willful and three serious — of federal safety regulations. The regulatory agency also proposed that Inland Crane, the Boise contractor used by Big D, be fined more than $10,000 for “failures to ensure stability during the hangar erection process.”
Big D Builders began the hangar at 4049 W. Wright St. without “sufficient bracing or tensioned guy wires” and “ignored numerous indications that the structure was unstable as workers continued to add 150-foot-long bays” during construction, OSHA said. The ignored warning signs included “visibly curved, bent and wavy structural I-beams, unbalanced columns and several snapped wire rope cables.”
“OSHA found the bays were visibly not straight and that the contractor left many critical connecting bolts loose and, rather than installing additional bracing or temporary guy lines per steel erection industry standards, used straps to straighten the additional spans,” the release said.
Additional findings in the federal workplace safety investigation indicated that Big D Builders risked cranes and other construction equipment overturning when it had employees operate them in mud and standing water. Big D also failed to properly train its employees in the construction of steel spans, according to the report.
“Big D Builders’ blatant disregard for federal safety regulations cost three workers their lives and caused at least eight others to suffer painful injuries,” Kearns said in the release. “The company’s irresponsible construction methods left the aircraft hangar’s structure extremely vulnerable.”
Big D Builders and Inland Crane have 15 days to either comply, request an informal conference with Kearns or contest the citations to the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.
Victims’ families say contractors altered documents
In a July lawsuit, the law firm representing the families of two workers killed in the collapse blamed Big D Builders, Steel Building Systems, Inland Crane and Speck Steel for their loved one’s deaths, the Statesman previously reported.
Enrique Serna, the families’ lawyer, accused the companies of modifying building blueprints — and failing to get the city’s approval for the changes — manufacturing their own “rushed” materials for the structure’s bracing, and allowing work at the site to continue on Jan. 31 despite workers’ reports of “bowing beams” and “snapping cables” the day before.
Serna did not mention the city of Boise or its contracted engineering firm, AHJ Engineers, in the lawsuit, though both were named in a tort claim filed against the city in May. After reviewing public records requested from the city, the law firm said it decided no suit against those entities was warranted.
The Idaho Statesman reported that several hangar employees told police they had noticed bending beams, snapped cables and overall structural failures, and they brought these concerns to Big D Builders owner Durrant.
Durrant allegedly told an employee that the engineer told him the building’s frame was fine, because the workers had added straps on the beams, according to prior Statesman reporting.
“There were plenty of warning signs that things were not right,” Enrique Serna, an attorney representing the families, previously told the Statesman by phone. “They clearly knew that something was off.”
A crane operator for Inland Crane told police that the company was at the site to “straighten out the hangar because portions of it were bending” while another alleged that Big D Builders was cutting corners, according to prior Statesman reporting.
Big D Builders began to demolish and deconstruct the collapsed steel-and-concrete structure in June.
“(The) building (is) to be rebuilt using (the) existing building permit, with modifications to be made to structural drawings,” according a city permit filed by Big D Builders.
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