ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, June 29, 1996 TAG: 9607010051
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: LISA K. GARCIA STAFF WRITER
The Pulaski construction worker who fell 90 feet to his death Thursday from the Cassell Coliseum roof was a temporary worker on the second day of his job.
Dewey Wayne Duncan, known to friends and family as Wayne, was three days shy of his 28th birthday the day he died.
Peggy Milam, Duncan's mother, said her son expressed concern about the height of the roof he would be working on the first day she drove him to work.
"He looked up and said 'Boy, that roof looks high,''' she said.
Milam said the job was her son's first working at such heights, and that most of his construction experience consisted of work at ground level. She told him the first day if he decided he could not handle the work, to call home and she would come get him.
By the end of the day, however, he told her that the roof work "wasn't all that bad," she said.
Duncan was closing the roof to protect the interior of the building from rain the day he died, according to the general contractor.
Allen R. Neely, owner of Allen R. Neely Co. of Narrows, said his company was hired by Virginia Tech to complete $3.35 million in roof renovations. He, in turn, subcontracted with AAR of North Carolina, based in Kernersville, N.C., for some of the roofing work.
AAR hired Duncan through Southern Personnel Services, an employment agency based in Columbia, S.C., which has a branch in Pulaski.
OSHA is investigating all three companies' involvement in the accident.
Duncan fell through a ceiling tile and landed on the arena floor about 1:45 p.m. He was pronounced dead at Columbia Montgomery Regional Hospital about 2 p.m.
Officials will not say if Duncan was wearing the safety harness and tether required when working on the roof.
Betty Belcher, chief executive officer of Southern Personnel, said her company provides temporary, full- and part-time workers for clerical and light-industrial jobs. It was Duncan's second day with AAR when the accident occurred, but he had worked with several of Southern Personnel's other clients and was an "excellent worker," she said.
Duncan's mother described her son as a loving man who helped take care of his bedridden grandmother, loved to fish with his stepfather, and enjoyed working on all types of motors and bicycles. He also enjoyed construction, she said.
Belcher said an employee has never died in the company's nearly five years of operation.
"It has rocked us to the bottoms of our feet. This has really saddened us deeply," she said. "We felt comfortable he knew what he could and could not do.
"Our safety procedures are so precise and detailed that at this point I see no plans to change them because they have worked so well for nearly five years," Belcher said.
Besides going over several safety rules upon interviewing each applicant and before each new assignment, each employee must go through training provided by the client company, Belcher said. In this case, AAR gave Duncan specific instructions on how to perform the job and his supervisor showed him how to wear the body harness and secure it, she said.
Dick Crawford, a spokesman for the state division of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said it will likely be about four months before information is released about the investigation.
Neely said the roof of the coliseum was painted to mark safe areas. Safety ropes - to which workers attached their harnesses - traversed the roof, he said. Each work day began with a meeting on safety and each employee got a safety plan written for the project, he said.
No one from AAR would comment on the accident.
Crawford said OSHA keeps records of past inspections and offenses of all the companies they deal with in the state.
Despite a fatal accident in which a 27-year-old woman was crushed to death by sandbags in October 1991, and a subsequent $1,000 fine, Crawford said Neely's company has a "pretty clean" record.
Sherrie Crockett of Pearisburg died from head injuries when two pallets, each holding 38 sandbags that weighed 100 pounds apiece, slid on top of her.
Neely's company was fined in connection with Crockett's death because "materials stored in tiers were not stacked, blocked, interlocked or limited in height so that they were stable and secure against sliding."
OSHA inspectors drop in for unannounced inspections at random, according to Crawford. Two inspections of Neely's company in one year were good, Crawford said.
Inspectors did not discover any violations by Neely's company during an on-site inspection in September 1995, and they found a couple of "minor" violations during a June 1995 inspection, he said.
Crawford said an OSHA inspection of AAR in August 1995 resulted in one minor violation that carried a $125 fine.
"If a company does have poor safety standards, they'll have lots of violations," Crawford said. "Goodness, we see companies with 15 to 20 serious violations in one inspection."
LENGTH: Medium: 96 lines KEYWORDS: FATALITYby CNB