MISSION VIEJO : Road Work Resumes at Site of Fatality

Grading and excavation work resumed Thursday on the Oso Parkway extension east of Mission Viejo, the day after a 42-year-old Pacoima man was killed by a landslide in a drainage ditch.

Antonio Ramirez Diaz, a laborer survived by his wife and three children, was killed Wednesday morning when a mound of dirt next to a narrow trench about 3 feet deep slid down on top of him. Frantic efforts by his fellow workers to dig him out failed and he was pronounced dead at the scene.

A preliminary report from Deputy Coroner Cullen Ellingburgh revealed that Diaz suffocated.

“We have listed his cause of death as asphyxiation due to external obstruction of airways,” Ellingburgh said. “No other significant conditions contributed to his death.”

A spokesman for Gardena-based Nelson & Belding Construction Corp., the subcontractors doing the trench work, said he was convinced that proper safety procedures had been used at the site. Dennis Frost, a vice president for Nelson & Belding, refused to comment further, other than to say Diaz was an employee in good standing and had worked for the company for 20 years.

“This was just a tragic accident,” said Van Vanderbilt, a Nelson & Belding foreman at the accident site.

A spokesman for Cal/OSHA, the state’s job safety agency, said a preliminary report indicated that proper procedures were being used at the accident site. A more detailed report is pending.

Safety standards require that drainage trenches such as the one being excavated along the parkway extension must be either shored up with plywood or some other structural material or stairstepped in 4-foot sections, as was done in this case, said Bill Scott, a Nelson & Belding superintendent at the site.

Wednesday’s accident was the second fatality involving Nelson & Belding in about the last two years. A soil engineer was crushed to death during a grading project in Laguna Niguel in March, 1989, when an earthmover driven by a Nelson & Belding employee ran over him.

According to records at Cal/OSHA, Nelson & Belding has been cited eight times in the past 12 years, all for minor procedural violations, said Rick Rice, the agency’s public information officer.

Of those eight citations, only one carried a fine. The company was fined $185 for working too close to overhead power lines at a Walnut construction site on April 14, 1982, Rice said.

“In that case, no one was injured, it was just a dangerous situation,” Rice said.

Statewide statistics from 1981 through 1989 show a total of 38 fatalities caused by ditch, trench or excavation cave-ins, according to the California division of labor statistics and research. From 1985 through 1989, 165 workers were injured in cave-ins.