Falling steel crushes mill workers

By PATRICK GOWER and MATHEW DEARNALEY

Two maintenance workers were killed after they were hit by a two-tonne bundle of steel that fell from a crane in an Auckland factory yesterday.

The deaths give a shocking start to a new reporting year for the Labour Department's Occupational Safety and Health service, which is hoping to improve on last year's appalling record of 73 workplace deaths.

The two men were working on a weight bridge in the Fletcher Building-owned Pacific Steel factory in Otahuhu when the reinforcing steel fell at 10.30am.

Subcontractor Gareth Lloyd George, aged 55, of Greenhithe, was killed instantly.

His employee and workmate, Raymond Rutherford Wilson, 56, of Otahuhu, was rushed to Middlemore Hospital but died shortly afterwards.

Although the mill had a bad safety record in the late 1990s, including two deaths in one year, unionists acknowledge a vastly improved approach, and only last week it won an ACC safety award.

Senior Sergeant Jason Hewett of Counties-Manukau said the electro-magnetic crane under which Mr George and Mr Wilson were working was shifting steel bundles from one end of the factory.

The bundle of steel rods, like those used to reinforce concrete, was about 20ft long and had a diameter similar to that of a 50-gallon drum.

"It certainly shouldn't have happened."

The mill was shut yesterday for police and OSH inspectors.

OSH Auckland regional manager John Forrest said it had prohibited use of the crane until it was examined by an engineer to find out why the bundle fell.

They would also ask whether the crane operator was aware of the men.

Mr Forrest said the investigation would cover the actions of the site operator, sub-contractor and all employees.

Fletcher Building chief executive Ralph Waters said nobody involved in the accident was a company employee.

The victims were subcontractors, and the dispatch area of the roller mill, where the accident happened, was run by an outside company.

"I'm not saying we have no responsibility ... We are simply saying that the area where it happened is operated by an external contractor on our behalf."

He said the company was very conscious of its safety record, on which the firm had made "significant progress".

Mr Waters, who arrived from Australia 12 months ago, said he was surprised by the number of workplace accidents.

The entire Pacific Steel mill site is expected to remain closed today to allow safety inspectors to continue their investigation and the workforce to steady their nerves after the horrific accident.

Although unionists have praised the company's attention to health and safety, they say they would be disappointed at any attempt to distance itself from contractors' actions.

Mr George owned the maintenance subcontracting firm Steelcraft Engineering with his wife Christine, and employed a number of other workers.

Gavin George, the 25-year-old youngest of three sons, said last night that his father was "very much" a hands-on company director, who had brought his family from Wales in 1981 to a new life in this country.

Council of Trade Unions president Ross Wilson called on all political parties to state their strategies for reducing "the appalling death toll in New Zealand workplaces".

He noted that MPs had walked away from Parliament without passing the Health and Safety in Employment Bill, which employers attacked at select committee hearings as being too prescriptive and punitive with its fivefold increase in fines.

But Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union northern secretary Mike Sweeney acknowledged last night that Pacific Steel had vastly improved its record.

The steel company was fined $35,000 after an accident in 1998 in which 60-year-old maintenance fitter Jim Kelly was crushed by a mechanical arm in the steel rolling mill.

Another worker died the same year of a heart attack after being overcome by carbon monoxide fumes, and the company was fined $36,000 for an accident in 1999 in which an employee, Isaac Fruean, lost an arm when it was crushed in a roller.

The company's safety record was criticised by the judge in a court case over that accident, and its management admitted the record was not up to standard, but promised that safety had taken precedence over production.

Last week's ACC safety award at the 2002 WestpacTrust Manukau Business Excellence Awards was for the company's work towards a goal of "zero harm" in what the organisers said was a very dangerous work environment.

An ACC spokesman said this followed a reduction in lost-time accidents to 10 a year from 300 in 1999.

The mill now receives a 15 per cent discount on insurance premiums for improving safety systems and culture.

Fatal accidents

Fatal workplace accidents investigated by OSH from July 1 last year to May 29:

* Industrial/commercial: 25

* Construction: 12

* Forestry: 2

* Agriculture: 25

* Mines and quarries: 5

* Accidents between May 30 and June 30 have yet to be catalogued but bring the total for that financial year to 73.