The number of Coloradans who died in workplace-related incidents rose by about 15 percent last year, according to a national report on such deaths by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Among them were a pair of state workers run over as they repaired potholes on Interstate 25.
In 2004, 117 people died in workplace-related incidents in Colorado, compared with 102 in 2003, according to the bureau. The Colorado Department of Health and Environment, which will issue its own report on job-related fatal injuries in a few weeks, confirmed the national agency’s numbers.
The reports don’t offer any explanation for the increase, said Mary Chase, director of the Colorado agency’s vital-statistics unit.
“We don’t ever really know why,” Chase said.
Incidents involving workers and vehicles accounted for one of every four fatal work injuries throughout the country in 2004, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said in its report, released last week.
Transportation-related accidents accounted for the most work-related fatalities in Colorado, with a total of 60 last year, compared with 39 in 2003.
In the summer of 2004, Colorado Department of Transportation workers Eladio Lopez and Paul Forster were run down by a drunken driver going the wrong way on I-25.
A judge sentenced April Garcia, who was drunk when she plowed into the two, to 24 years in prison in May.
Colorado’s second-leading cause of death at work was assaults and other acts of violence, which accounted for 25 deaths. Among them were 11 suicides, five assaults by animals and at least eight homicides.
Sixteen people died from contact with objects and equipment, nine from falls and five from exposure to harmful substances or environments.
Workers between the ages of 45 and 54 were most likely to die on the job, accounting for 27 of the state’s total deaths.
Only 11 of the Colorado dead were women, Chase said.
The rate at which fatal work injuries occurred nationally in 2004 was 4.1 per 100,000 workers, up slightly from a rate of 4.0 per 100,000 workers in 2002 and 2003.
In Colorado, the rate was five per 100,000 workers, up from about four per 100,000 in 2003.
Colorado was one of 27 states reporting higher fatalities in 2004 than the previous year, the bureau said.
Nationally, 5,703 fatal work injuries were recorded in 2004, an increase of 2.3 percent from the 5,575 fatal work injuries reported for 2003.
Staff writer Tom McGhee can be reached at 303-820-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com.
