Members of the National Transportation Safety Board blasted Colorado’s transportation department and two construction companies today, saying a series of miscalculations, missteps, improper planning and deficient oversight led to a girder collapsing onto Interstate 70 two years ago near Golden, shearing an SUV in half and killing an entire Evergreen family.
The work “was outright sloppy,” Mark V. Rosenker, the NTSB’s acting chairman, said during the meeting in Washington, D.C., in which officials blamed the incident on the three entities and recommended policy changes. “It disgusts me that a family was wiped out because of the sloppiness of this project.”
While Asphalt Specialties Co. and Ridge Erection Co. – the contractor and subcontractor for the job – were ridiculed for poor workmanship and inattention to the 40-ton, 100-foot-long girder, CDOT received the brunt of NTSB criticism, varying from the department’s impotent oversight policies to individual employees who failed to notify superiors that completed work was unsatisfactory or potentially dangerous.
The girder, which was part of a widening of the C-470 overpass above I-70, fell May 15, 2004, killing William Post, his wife, Anita, and the couple’s 2-year-old daughter, Koby.
Anita Post was pregnant.
“It was a tragic accident,” said Vernon Dugger, president of Arvada-based Ridge Erection, who declined to comment on specific details leading up to the accident. “The suffering of the family far outweighs the suffering any of the companies have gone through.”
CDOT and the two companies paid the Post’s families a combined $1.5 million, with the contractor and subcontractor absorbing most of the payment. The settlement, CDOT has said, was not an admission of liability and prevents any civil lawsuits against the trio.
“There has been a lot of finger-pointing and passing the buck” following the accident, NTSB member Kitty Higgins said. What happened “is borderline criminal negligence… and that is just stunning.”
The NTSB, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office and the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office worked together and determined that the mistakes did not warrant criminal charges, a sheriff’s office spokesman said.
CDOT spokeswoman Stacey Stegman said if supervisors at the site “believed there were any issues with safety, they would have notified someone.”
Officials from Asphalt Specialties did not return several calls requesting comment about the NTSB report.
Several months after the incident, CDOT enacted sweeping reforms that mandate a project engineer’s involvement in girder erection and require detailed, weeks-long planning of girder placements, among other items.
The NTSB also made its own recommendations, namely that CDOT should more actively monitor contractor and subcontractor work.
