Texas family petitions for upgraded 911 systems after hotel death

ALBANY, GA- Last month an East Texas family suffered the loss of a young mother, Kari Hunt Dunn. She was stabbed multiple times in a hotel room where she was staying with her family, her 9 year old daughter tried calling 911 for help but couldn't get through. She tried several times but heard nothing but static, she had no idea she had to dial a prefix before making the call from the hotel phone.

"We spend a lot of time doing that and we know 911 and young children just typically know 911 and they expect to hear a voice on the other end," Albany-Dougherty Emergency Management Agency representative Jim Vault said.

That's why the Hunt family is striving to get support for an online petition that would require every single hotel and business to upgrade their 911 systems and get rid of the dial out number. So far, over 400,000 people are have signed for the change called "Kari's Law," in honor of the mother's life who was lost.

"It impacts a larger number across the nation and again with any public safety time is essence," Albany-Dougherty EMS Training Supervisor Richard Roberts shares. "It can make the big difference whether it's EMS, law or fire."

Vault explains, "If they have to dial a prefix to get out then it can become confusing and time delaying and they never get the call through."

In the Albany-Dougherty area, the enhanced 911 system is in place, it gives location and number to which the caller is calling from and the prefix is also not a requirement. However, some cities and their businesses still require the dial out before. Emergency officials feel it's an important issue that sometimes falls under the radar.

"For us it would be much better if 911 means 911," Vault said.

The Hunt family hopes the requirement will help those in need get help faster.

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Source: WALB (Rosales, 1/13)

Mother angry over handling of school playground accident

PASADENA, Texas -- A first grader from Fisher Elementary is nursing a broken wrist and her mom believes the school didn't do enough after it happened.

Herminia Castillo fell off the monkey bars.

"She landed really, really hard on the floor,' said Herminia's mom Rosalinda Garcia. "Not one of the teachers had gone to go and check on her or see if she was okay."

The school let Garcia look at surveillance video from the playground and she noticed it was actually other students who helped Herminia over to the adults.

"They weren't supervising her properly to attend to her on time," Garcia said.

We asked Pasadena ISD for the video but they won't release it at this point.

However, district officials tell us that another child was injured moments before and since Herminia's injury didn't appear that serious, they went in order.

The first grader was eventually taken inside.

"The teacher took me to the nurse and then the nurse put ice on it and water on it," Castillo said.

Garcia says she got the call about what happened an hour later.

When they were reunited, the 6-year-old was taken to the emergency room. Her fractured wrist means no PE or recess for a little while.

Since Herminia's mom thinks some retraining is in order, district officials have agreed to meet with her next week to talk about it.

No one from Pasadena ISD would talk on camera about the incident but they did send us this statement:

We regret that this first grade student got hurt playing on the playground during recess. Teachers on the playground and the campus R.N. responded quickly and appropriately to this child’s injury. The supervising teacher who responded to the injured student got to her within 35 seconds.

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Source: KHOU (Craig, 10/24)

Police say woman's death at Texas climbing gym a tragic accident

GRAPEVINE, Texas –– Police say the death of an experienced climber at a Grapevine climbing gym was an unfortunate accident.

According to Grapevine police, 52-year old Susan Mailloux likely forgot to clip herself into the safety rope system provided by the gym. If Mailloux’s Facebook page is any indication, she loved rock climbing. It is covered with pictures of her on the wall.

Yesterday, police say, she was climbing with her boyfriend and his son, at Summit Climbing. At the top, 25 to 30 feet up, police say Mailloux let go, as if she thought she was tied in. She was not.

“Once she got to the top of that road ladder she simply released as if she was attached to it and then she fell to the ground,” said Sgt. Robert Eberling with the Grapevine Police Department.

The gym requires climbers to sign a waiver warning against all types of possible injury or death, including “freakish accidents which cannot be forseen.” Police say Mailloux failed to clip into, what’s called an auto-belay, an automatic harness system that lowers a falling climber, slowly, to the ground.

Ben Mann is also a climber at Summit, he did not know Mailloux.

“All of the rock walls are lined with ropes and about every five to ten feet there’s a sign that says don’t forget to clip in, or make sure you’re clipped in,” Mann said.

The manager of the Budget Suites in Irving, confirmed Mailloux had lived here for several years Former neighbors say she also has a son in the Navy. The owner of Summit said Mailloux came in once every week or ten days to climb and police confirm had experience climbing.

The gym was closed today and will also be closed tomorrow, the owner says, out of respect for Mailloux and her family.

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Source: Kens5 (Schechter, 09/24)

Construction workers in West Campus apartment complexes allege mistreatment, unpaid wages

Of the three West Campus apartment complexes that opened to more than 1,000 students this fall, at least two were built by construction workers who claimed they were mistreated.

Documents obtained from the City of Austin show complaints have been filed against the contractors who oversaw construction of 2400 Nueces and The Callaway House for lack of rest and water breaks for construction workers. Workers Defense Project, a nonprofit that strives to represent mistreated workers in Texas, has also taken legal action against owners of The Callaway House twice this year after learning of unpaid wages for construction workers who worked on the private off-campus dorm.

The City of Austin received a complaint, regarding breaks, against the construction project at the 2400 Nueces site. Construction workers who built the property have claimed they were not given rest or water breaks during day-long shifts of work. While Texas does not require breaks at the state level, a City of Austin ordinance requires a 10-minute rest break for every four hours on the job. A construction worker, who worked on 2400 Nueces and spoke to The Daily Texan on the condition of anonymity, said he was mistreated in several ways while working on the project.

Despite the conditions and not receiving overtime pay, the worker said he could not quit because he had to provide for his family and the work at 2400 Nueces was the only job he could get at the time.

Hensel Phelps, the general contractor for the project, did not return a request for comment, but city records show an inspector visited the site in response to the complaint filed in July 2012 and took pictures of rest stations, water coolers and the required city-issued signage about the policy. The land 2400 Nueces was built on is leased by UT to a private college student housing developer.

Around the same time the rest breaks complaint was filed, a construction worker at 2400 Nueces fell from the sixth floor injuring himself and the two other workers he fell on. They were all treated at a hospital for non-life-threatening injuries.

The worker interviewed by The Daily Texan — who was not one of the workers who fell — said he and other construction workers were not given any kind of health insurance or compensation while working on the site.

Greg Casar, a business liaison representative for Workers Defense Project, compared Texas’ construction industry to doping in sports.

“When it is so competitive, and there is really no enforcement or oversight, then it creates an incentive for everybody to cheat,” Casar said.

Texas is one of the nation’s most robust states for construction, with more than 950,000 construction workers in the state, according to the 2010 U.S. Census. Accompanying this massive amount of construction work is limited state government oversight and regulation. Unlike California and other states with large construction industries, Texas does not require breaks for workers or compensation for on-the-job injuries. The state also has no task force in place to monitor workplace fraud.

The allegations made by workers in West Campus are consistent with statewide worker mistreatment issues discussed in a report by UT.

Earlier this year, UT faculty — in partnership with Workers Defense Project and faculty from the University of Illinois at Chicago — released Build a Better Texas, a report that examined the construction industry in Texas. The report found 39 percent of workers surveyed said they did not receive rest breaks. Another issue many construction workers face is misclassification as contractors, because of which workers are often not paid for overtime, forced to supply their own safety equipment and are not given insurance.

Workers Defense Project alleges this occurs at most private construction projects like 2400 Nueces.

“The idea is you are completely on your own,” Casar said. “It totally severs any level of responsibility anybody has to that worker.”

Worker misclassification, or workplace fraud, is illegal nationwide but the way individual states handle and investigate these instances varies greatly. About 41 percent of workers surveyed said they were victims of workplace fraud, according to Build a Better Texas.

Further complicating the situation is the distant relationship between general contractors and construction workers, who are often hired and supervised by subcontractors.

“It’s not the general contractors that are cheating,” Casar said. “They have a direct working relationship at the developer level, and aren’t overseeing the labor at any phase. If you just build a building, and don’t ask questions, that’s what you get.”

In July, Workers Defense Project filed a lien — a legal maneuver that prevents the owners from selling the property and could lead to further legal action — against American Campus Communities, the owner of The Callaway House, after construction workers who worked on the project claimed $36,800 in unpaid wages. Earlier this week, The Callaway House’s general contractor, Harvey-Cleary, promised to pay the unpaid wages following the lien.

This is the second time Workers Defense Project has successfully advocated for unpaid workers against the owners of The Callaway House. In April, workers won a claim of more than $24,000 in unpaid wages.

Gina Cowart, vice president of investor relations and corporate marketing at American Campus Communities, said the company had instructed Harvey-Cleary to pay the workers for the full amount of unpaid wages. American Campus Communities is “rigorous” in paying its contractors and service providers, Cowart said.

“We do not believe we have been accurately portrayed by Workers Defense Project communications,” Cowart said in a statement. “However, we do respect the role they played in bringing the matter to our attention to foster resolution.”

Almost a quarter of construction workers surveyed by Build a Better Texas reported they had previously been denied wages.

The documents obtained from the city also revealed a complaint filed in May against The Callaway House construction project for violating the ordinance that requires rest breaks on construction sites.

City records show an inspector visited the site after the complaint and found the required city-issued signage about the policy was posted at the site. The inspector also reminded the management of the ordinance.

Harvey-Cleary did not return a request for comment.

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Source: Daily Texan (Blanchard, 9/06)

The Texas Fertilizer Plant Explosion Wasn't an Accident

Almost everyone in America knows the names of the two young terrorists allegedly responsible for the April 15 Boston Marathon bombings, but few can identify the owner of the fertilizer plant that exploded in West, Texas, two days later. Both are culpable of killing innocent people, but the media, along with government regulators and law enforcement agencies, poured much more time and resources into finding the two Tsarnaev brothers than they did in investigating Donald Adair. Crime in the streets (particularly by terrorists) is big news but crime in the suites rarely makes headlines.

Why isn't the American public calling for the arrest, conviction, and imprisonment of Adair, the owner of the West Fertilizer Company in West, Texas, where an explosion on April 17 killed 14 people, left 200 others with injuries (including burns, lacerations, and broken bones), flattened houses and a 50-unit apartment building, destroyed a nursing home, damaged a local school, and left a crater 93 feet by 10 feet?

The explosion was so devastating that investigators, almost two months after the incident, are unable to definitively determine the exact cause of the explosion. But it is possible that Adair -- who also owns Adair Grain (the parent company of West Fertilizer) and Adair Farms, including about 5,000 acres of cropland and grassland in the area, worth several million dollars -- consistently flouted the law and common sense safety measures that put both his employees and the surrounding community at risk.

When 84-year-old Eula Bingham, OSHA chief under President Jimmy Carter, heard the news about the West, Texas, explosion, she thought, "Oh my god a fertilizer plant." According to Bingham, "fertilizer plants are well known as the most horrible, explosive places in the world." Adair had ample opportunity to know and follow the law and certainly knew the consequences of failure.

After 9/11 companies like Adair's were required to inform the government of chemicals that could be used in terrorist attacks. West Fertilizer stored large quantities of anhydrous ammonia and ammonium nitrate, in the middle of a small town. The company failed to tell the Department of Homeland Security that it was storing 270 tons of ammonium nitrate (the same chemical that Tim McVeigh used to bomb the Oklahoma city federal building in 1995, which left 168 people dead) as required by law.

The U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration fined the factory in 1985 for mishandling storage of anhydrous ammonia. In 2011, the same agency cited the firm for "not having a security plan" and for improperly planning to transport anhydrous ammonia and issued a fine of $5,250.

The federal EPA last inspected the plant in 2006 and assessed a fine of $2,300 for failing to update a risk management plan. The company responded in 2011 with an updated but misleading plan, stating that its chemicals did not pose a risk or fire or explosion, and claiming that the "worse-case scenario" was a 10-minute release of gas or a leak from a broken house, neither of them harmful to human.

The company also reported contradictory information to state agencies. It filed reports with the Department of State Health Services that it had not stored ammonium nitrate on site until 2012. Yet it reported to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality that it had a "maximum annual through put" of 2400 tons, or 4.8 million pounds of ammonium nitrate after the department found that it was operating without a permit.

Adair ran a fertilizer company that stored tons of highly explosive ammonium nitrate, failed to follow government safety guidelines and -- laws or no laws -- shirked his basic responsibility to prevent a foreseeable, preventable and tragic disaster. Is he any less a killer than the Boston bombers?

If so, Adair shares that responsibility with others. There are at least 2,500 facilities around the country that could each put over 10,000 people at risk in the event of an accident, according to a recent Congressional Research Service memo. Last year alone, 1,270 people died in over 30,000 chemical spills and accidents.

Corporate lobby groups have consistently opposed common sense safeguards for our food, consumer products, environment, drugs, and workplaces. They've spent billions of dollars in campaign contributions, lobbyists and donations to conservative think tanks and front groups to oppose and weaken these and other safety laws and gut the budgets of government agencies set up to enforce them. Their resistance delayed life-saving protections for decades in some cases. The chemical industry has been one of the most effective lobby groups in this regard. In the 1970s, for example, the industry lobbied Congress to prohibit OSHA from regularly inspecting workplaces with fewer than 10 employees in industries with low reported injury rates. Fertilizer plants are included on the list of exempted industries. This may be why OSHA hadn't inspected the West Fertilizer plant since 1985.

The chemical industry opposed a 1981 OSHA "hazard communication" rule requiring employers to label toxic chemicals used by workers on the job. The common sense rules would have put "virtually unmanageable burdens on small manufacturers," according to Ralph Engel representing the Chemical Specialties Manufacturers Association. Engle claimed that "workers would be just as safe without this regulation." It's hard to imagine workers able to take proper precautions when they don't know about the dangers of the poisons they work with.

The chemical industry successfully delayed federal "right to know" legislation requiring disclosure of toxic chemicals to workers and nearby communities until a 1984 gas leak at a Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, India exposed 500,00 people to toxic gas that killed nearly 4,000 and disabled many more. The disaster created public demand for action that overwhelmed industry opposition and led to the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act of 1986. Eugene Humphrey, representing the Organic Chemical Manufacturers Association, testified before Congress that disclosing the existence of dangerous chemicals would burden small business and wouldn't "significantly improve the protection of human health or the environment."

In 1992, the Fertilizer Institute, another trade group, successfully lobbied for a "retail exemption" rule that allows facilities storing large amounts of dangerous chemicals to avoid strict OSHA and EPA regulation if they sell more than half of their chemicals to "end users," including farmers. It is possible that West Fertilizer claimed this exemption, even though the amount of anhydrous ammonia stored at the facility would otherwise have required extensive precautions.

In 2009 the chemical industry -- joined by major business lobby groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Farm Bureau -- spent $51 million pressuring Congress to oppose legislation that would have tightened security standards on chemical factories, fertilizer depots and water-treatment plants. The lobbying effort included "mining companies, refiners, paint makers, explosive fabricators and fertilizer plants," according to Bloomberg News. The industry -- including such giant firms as Dow Chemical and DuPont -- donated $34 million to political candidates in the last three elections, two-thirds of which went to Republicans. "If enacted, it could lead to disruption in our nation's food supply," the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and 25 other groups representing companies that mine, refine fuels, mill grains or make fertilizer, wrote in a letter to congressional leaders. The CEOs of these corporations, and the heads of their corporate industry lobby groups, don't intentionally want to see Americans killed or injured by unsafe workplaces, dangerous consumer products, and unhealthy toxic chemicals that destroy people's health. But by pushing Congress and state governments to weaken safety and health standards, and to slash budgets for inspection and enforcement, they make it inevitable that many Americans will needlessly die, suffer injuries, and ruin their health.

Business lobbies want to be free from government rules. Unfortunately, their freedom leads to tragedy for workers, families and communities.

Texas prides itself on the lack of rules for businesses. Texas is the only state that doesn't require companies to have workers compensation insurance. Houston is one of the few cities that have no zoning laws to create buffers between schools, homes and toxic chemical manufacturers. Texas doesn't have a state fire code and prohibits small counties from having local codes allowing fire marshals to inspect and prohibit the storage of highly flammable and explosive chemicals near homes and schools. According to the New York Times, some Texas counties even cite the lack of local fire codes as a reason for companies to move there.

Texas lawmakers have also recently sought to further weaken the state environmental agency that oversaw the West plant and reduced its budget by $305 million. Even after the explosion, Texas Governor Rick Perry claimed that more government oversight and more safeguards aren't needed.

The harsh reality is that none of the state or federal agencies has enough budget and staff to routinely inspect and enforce the laws on the books. For example, OSHA's tiny staff of around 2,400 inspectors is spread so thin that it would take more than 90 years to conduct even cursory inspections of all eligible workplaces in Texas.

We can't depend on government agencies to police every company and workplace to guarantee our safety and health. We have to expect businesses -- big and small alike -- to obey the law and take every precaution, whether required by government or not, to prevent the kind of needless death and destruction that happened in West, Tex. That is both their legal and moral responsibility, the social contract they agree to in order to stay in business and make a profit.

If they put profit before people, and allow greed or indifference to put lives at risk, they should be punished, even if an OSHA, EPA, or FDA inspector hadn't visited their operation for the past six months, year, or five years.

Corporate criminals rarely get caught. But even when they do, they rarely suffer sufficient consequences to deter them or their counterparts from routinely flouting health and safety laws. And even when they are found guilty, the fines are rarely big enough to make them change their ways.

Last year, for example, a serious violation of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Act drew an average penalty of $2,156. State-level OSHA agencies imposed an average $974 penalty for a serious violation. The median penalty in fatality cases investigated by federal OSHA was a meager $6,625. Corporations view these as just a cost of doing business, not a real deterrent.

Corporate lobbies routinely block laws that would impose stiffer penalties -- and would thusly serve as real incentive for businesses to change their behavior rather than cut corners, flout the law, and put human lives at risk.

America's criminal justice system operates on a double standard -- one for the rich and one for everyone else. According to federal law, someone caught using illegal food stamps goes to jail for one year. Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the architects of the bipartisan immigration bill, recently told reporters that employers who hire an undocumented worker will "get fined heavily, lose your business or may go to jail." It's hard to imagine Graham making the same argument about employers that flout workplace safety laws or the Clean Air Act.

By using their political clout to oppose and weaken health and safety laws, by violating laws because they don't think they'll get caught, and by viewing the small fines and sanctions they will face as simply a cost of doing business, America's corporate executives do more harm to society -- more deaths, more injuries, more chronic health problems -- than all the lunatics, sociopaths, and spouse abusers who kill and injure people by pulling the triggers of their guns.

Perhaps if corporate executives saw a significant number of their counterparts on the nightly news being handcuffed and sent to jail for violating laws meant to protect workers, consumers, and the environment, they would be more likely to make sure that their companies met the health and safety standards embodies in our laws.

Surely Donald Adair did not want to see his friends and neighbors in West suffer death and injury from explosion in his fertilizer plant. But he is culpable nonetheless for flouting the laws and shirking responsibilities that would make such explosions less likely. The explosion -- and thus the deaths and injuries -- was preventable. Perhaps people in West, Texas give Adair a pass because he's a local man who runs a small family-owned business. Does that make him any less of a killer?

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Source: The Blog (Dreier, 6/4)