Posted on 05/03/2023 11:20:07 AM PDT by ChicagoConservative27
A mechanic was hit with criminal charges this week in the death of his coworker who was crushed by an elevator that plunged six stories in a Bronx apartment building two years ago.
Peter Milatz, 67, is accused of disregarding safety protocols that could have avoided the disaster which killed 25-year-old apprentice mechanic Joseph Rosa on Feb. 18, 2021, prosecutors said Tuesday.
“Jobs in this field can be extremely dangerous, and workers must be protected,” Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark said in a statement. “If safety measures had been followed, the victim would still be alive today.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
In some cases, I would approve the removal of the governor in NY state, but this elevator incident seems like a criminal mistake.
I worked in power plants for five years 45 years ago and observed back then that 1) safety training was often non-existent or deficient and 2) even with training, it was often ignored.
We were supposed to always lock out rotating machinery with our own locks, but that was rarely done. A colleague was inside a huge fan (think a squirrel cage fan 12 feet in diameter with a 2,000 hp motor) when it was started. Those things took a long time to get up to speed and he was able to scramble out the hatch before it got real ugly.
I was at work one day with a bad cold and had taken some over the counter cold medication. A co-worker was poking at a stuck pneumatic switch on a burner igniter with his finger and I warned him “Don’t do that! The igniter can retract at any time and take off your finger or hand.”
So what did I do? I asked “What’s wrong with it?” and poked it with MY finger. Sure enough, the igniter retracted and I pulled my hand away, but I’m still missing a tiny bit of the tip of my left index finger. I can see it right now as I type this!
I had a couple of life-threatening situations, but got through them all, thank God. Fortunately, I never saw anybody get killed or seriously injured.
are you suggesting they should put the governor back in the elevator shaft?
Hard to distinguish such negligence from intentional homicide.
I worked at a chemical plant for a while for Brown & Root, being young and impatient I was often frustrated at how the Instrument techs would stop doing something and call the electrician, although the small job was easy to do.
I came to see that all those little procedures, and the personal lockouts, etc were important, that if you stop doing them eventually a step would be skipped and explosions or death could happen.
There were little reminders of safety, such as the plant across the street having a fire they couldn’t put out and us having to dodge car-sized debris when a 10-story silo blew up at our plant, or me kneeling on dry concrete to take an instrument reading and then noticing the skin on my knee disappearing like in a horror movie.
It was scary things like that that really made you mindful of safety. A moment’s lapse or shortcut could get you killed. Being young and somewhat stupid, you didn’t think that much about it at the time.
I was starting up a new power plant at the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base hospital. An electrician was working at the other end of the boiler building on an open motor control center panel and shorted his fishtape across a 480 volt bus to ground. FLASH!! The whole place lit up with an electric blue light and his fishtape vaporized like a burned-out light bulb filament. I figured I’d find a burning corpse, but somehow he survived without any injury. I still can see the flash and smell the ozone almost 50 years later.
“me kneeling on dry concrete to take an instrument reading and then noticing the skin on my knee disappearing”
Why did that happen?
I was working on something inside a box and barely touched 440 but nothing blew off and I didn’t die, the guys said that I probably only got 220 of it.
It was interesting going on the floors of stored materials where you were supposed to have a partner outside keeping track of you because the floors had a nitrogen blanket atmosphere.
Speaking of high voltage, BPA is putting in a new transformer substation near my home. The project has been on again, off again due to supply chain problems, particularly for the big components. Now the parts have arrived and being put in place with cranes. The whole affair looks otherworldly — nothing like traditional substations. The big towers and insulators keeping the three phases separate (I guess) look straight out of Tesla’s lab. And everything is sort of a silvery grey like you’d imagine a UFO to be. I’d take pictures but they have security cameras all over and would think I was a “terrist” or something
In this article I wonder if the older guy has dementia. Not trying to excuse him by any means but the lapses sure sound like it, especially if this kind of thing was not characteristic of him in earlier years.
I think they said it was catalyst that was making the skin melt.
Good point. It may not be dementia yet, but certainly those brief “senior moments” occur which could lead to a disaster like this. Anybody in their 60s or older knows.
On the Mini-Mental State Exam (MMSE), a score of 23 or lower (out of 30) supports a Dx of dementia. You might be surprised how many people over 60 fail to get a passing score. I seem to recall that Trump got a perfect score of 30 a few years ago.
Wasn’t that the Montreal Cognitive Assessment? I did a baseline of that in my mid-60s for comparison in later years. It seemed easy, but it sure was tough. They’d show you something early in the test and, unexpectedly, you were asked to remember it at the end of the test. I did ok, but didn’t ace it. It would be interesting to take it again as I’m nearing the 72nd birthday.
Back in the 90’s we had an employee at our plant whose wife was in a local hospital. While transferring her to another floor, her gurney was half way into the elevator when the brake gave out and the elevator floor plunged down and she was crushed. Horrible accident, don’t know how the settlement turned out.
I thought it was the MMSE only because I remember hearing “30” (unless that was a confabulation on my part).
How horrible! On our honeymoon many years ago, my wife and I got stuck in an elevator for over an hour in a Honolulu parking garage. Nobody came. I pried the doors open and we were stuck between floors. We could crawl up to the floor and get out, but I was scared to death something like that would happen. We eventually did escape that way unscathed.
I’ve always hated the possibility of being cut in two at the midriff. I don’t like going from Jetways onto airplanes because of the possibility the Jetway could suddenly lurch away from the plane dropping me 20 feet to the tarmac. I’ve never heard of that happening, but you know it COULD happen. So I stand back and then quickly dash into the plane.
The reaction of the attendant to our plight when we left the garage? Just what you think a Native Hawaiian reaction would be.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.