Vol. 79/No. 16 May 4, 2015
Dallas Foulk, 40, was climbing a ladder out of the car when the explosion hurled him into the air. He died soon after paramedics took him to the hospital.
Adrian LaPour, 44, was killed inside the burning tanker.
Joe Coschka, who had been working on top of the car, told the media he was saved by his safety harness that prevented him from being blown off. He said he heard LaPour call out for the ladder so he could get out of the car. The ladder had been blown about 200 feet away by the explosion. LaPour’s body was trapped inside the burning rail car for six hours until firefighters said the dangerous fumes dissipated.
The three men had never previously cleaned out petroleum distillates, a highly flammable substance created from crude oil, Coschka told the Omaha World Herald. He said LaPour told him, “It’s like walking on Mars, like Styrofoam. It’s weird,” and the smell was similar to natural gas.
“I just want their families to know they died hardworking guys in a serious accident. I am the survivor,” Coschka said, “I am going to speak for them.”
Friends said Foulk wanted off the job. “It was just a hard core work atmosphere, inhaling chemicals,” Zachary Vest told the World Herald April 17. “I know he didn’t like it.”
Foulk’s girlfriend Shelley Briggs told WOWT television that he told her the company didn’t follow safety guidelines.
“I heard a big explosion. I thought it was a jet that had taken off from Offutt Air Base and exploded. I ran to the back and looked up to the sky to see if it was falling from the air,” Tina Fough, a 16-year resident of the area near the rail yard, told the Militant. “I smelled fumes. There is a lot of cancer in this area. We don’t know what they do down there.”
“It sounded like the noise when you start a barbecue grill but a hundred times louder,” said Laura Champ, who was visiting her friend Tammy Mancilla when the blast took place. “I thought a rail car derailed,” Mancilla said. “We hear noises all the time, but this was different.”
Mancilla and Champ set up a makeshift memorial for the two workers on the hill above the rail yard.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited Nebraska Railcar Cleaning Services for a number of serious safety violations in 2013. The company recently cut a deal to pay more than $7,000 to settle two of them.
“No worker has to die on the job,” Dennis Richter, Socialist Workers Party candidate for governor of Nebraska in 2014, said in a statement released to the press and distributed to workers in the neighborhood around the rail yard and throughout the state. “The companies we work for and the government don’t represent our interests. Only the working class puts the lives of workers and those who live in the communities near dangerous workplaces ahead of profits.
“Only our own organization and use of trade union power — including the ability to shut down production — if we face dangers conditions can ensure safety,” the statement said.
In December seven workers were injured in an explosion in a rail car repair shop in Atchison, Kansas. No one has been held accountable.
Last May a 27-year-old worker employed by Environmental Remediation and Recovery Inc. died after collapsing inside a rail car he was cleaning in Chicago. OSHA held the company responsible and fined it $188,400.
A spaghetti dinner fundraiser for Foulk’s family will be held here at Joby C’s Midtown Tavern at 25th and Leavenworth April 25 at 3 p.m.
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DC Militant Labor Forum takes up fight for rail safety
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