PHOENIX — A deadly trench collapse in the West Valley nearly three years ago devastated two Arizona families.
Those families are now calling for changes in the state program that oversees worker safety. They say the Arizona Division of Occupational Safety and Health, or ADOSH, needs to levy higher fines against companies that break safety laws and regulations.
They also want more inspections of worksites to uncover safety violations before people are injured or killed.
“I feel that everyone needs to be held accountable. And they're not. My brother would be here if people were held accountable,” said Deanna Mori.
Her brother, Rudy Mori, was part of a construction crew, digging to find a sewer line on July 23, 2020. Without warning, dirt poured into the 10-foot-deep trench and onto Rudy and his co-worker Alex Quaresma.
Their families rushed to the construction site and soon learned the tragic news that 33-year-old Rudy and 36-year-old Alex had been buried alive.
“I just kind of blacked out at that point. I just felt I wasn't in my body. And I wasn't in that moment,” said Tara Macon, Alex’s fiancée.
She had a friend drive her home. Rudy’s family waited for hours in near triple-digit temperatures while firefighters recovered the bodies.
ADOSH investigated the deaths and said the company, Construction Specification Solutions, violated safety laws.
ADOSH said the company failed to have an adequate protection system in place on the trench. It also didn’t train workers to recognize unsafe conditions, according to ADOSH.
The company received four serious safety violations. ADOSH fined the company $8,000.
“These companies are getting slapped on the wrist and being sent on their way. And people are having to deal with the devastation in their family,” Deanna Mori said.
ADOSH oversees health and safety for about three million Arizona workers - from private sector businesses to employees at state and local governments.
A federal audit last year of Arizona’s worker-safety program found that fines issued to companies were significantly lower than the national average.
The audit also found that workplace compliance inspections have declined. Records show fines declined from $1.1 million a year to $568,000 from fiscal 2017 to 2021.
Workplace compliance inspections also declined by more than 50% in that same five-year period from more than 1,200 to less than 500.
Dave Wells, research director for the Grand Canyon Institute, a non-profit that studies public policies, calls the decline in inspections a significant problem. “Arizona is a growing state. We have more people moving here, so we should expect inspections to be going up, not down," he said.
ADOSH officials declined interview requests from ABC15.
In a statement, the agency said:
Every workplace fatality is tragic, and no one can truly understand what it is like to lose a loved one after saying goodbye to them as they left for work. It is because of this that we have worked tirelessly to improve workplace safety in Arizona, but our job is never finished.
John Wittwer, an attorney for Construction Specification Solutions, declined to comment this month because of pending litigation. The company provided documentation to ADOSH showing it gave workers more safety training and held safety meetings after Alex and Rudy’s deaths.
When Construction Specification Solutions was fined in 2021, an attorney representing the company, Travis Vance, expressed condolences to the families.
“Our position would be that there would be no knowledge on behalf of the company of the conditions that have been cited,” Vance said at a public meeting before fines were levied.
Arizona is one of 22 states that run its own worker-safety programs with permission from the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Employers are required to provide working conditions that are free of known dangers.
OSHA says a state’s safety protections must be “at least as effective” as federal ones.
But this definition of “at least as effective” has led to tense relations between OSHA and ADOSH.
In 2012 and 2022, OSHA threatened to strip the state of its ability to oversee workplace safety. Federal officials said in a letter that Arizona has “routinely failed” to provide a program that is at least as effective as OSHA.
For example, OSHA accused Arizona of failing to adopt federal safety standards and directives in a timely manner. It took Arizona more than six years to raise its maximum fines for safety violations to match federal ones.
ADOSH officials countered that such a change required legislative action, which finally happened in 2022, and wasn’t something the agency could do on its own.
ADOSH called the threatened federal takeover “unfounded” and “arbitrary” in a letter responding to OSHA. ADOSH enjoys strong support from the business community leaders, and dozens wrote letters to OSHA over the past year, arguing against a federal takeover.
Earlier this year, federal officials backed off a takeover threat. OSHA in a statement said it “recognizes the state’s efforts to address deficiencies” in the state’s workplace safety plan.
But OSHA said it remained concerned about a downward trend in workplace inspections and is working with Arizona to increase inspections.
A federal audit last year by OSHA said the state completed “only” 44% of its inspection goal for fiscal year 2021 with 486 enforcement inspections.
OSHA directed ADOSH to “determine the cause and implement corrective action to meet inspection goals.”
In a written response to the audit findings, ADOSH Director Jessie Atencio blamed a lack of inspectors and the COVID-19 pandemic for the inspection declines. He said Arizona was not the only state that has had trouble attracting and keeping inspectors.
“ADOSH continues to look for ways to attract new talent to our workforce,” Atencio wrote.
In a statement to ABC15, ADOSH said it has made 13 new hires over the last eight months in the compliance division. The agency also said it held 353 hands-on workplace safety trainings last year.
“We will continue to improve workplace safety in Arizona to ensure all workers are able to go home safe at the end of the day,” ADOSH said in the statement to ABC15.
Email ABC15 Investigator Anne Ryman at anne.ryman@abc15.com, call her at 602-685-6345, or connect on Twitter and Facebook.
