A member of a two-man rubber-removal team was killed at Denver International Airport this morning when he was struck by a giant runway sweeper, officials said.
DIA spokesman Chuck Cannon said the crew was removing the skid-mark rubber left by landing aircraft on runway 1-6-left, also known as 3-4-right, just before 5 a.m. when the incident occurred.
Detective John White, spokesman for the Denver Police Department, said the dead man, about 46 years old, had apparently bent over to retrieve an item and could not be seen by the operator of the sweeper.
He was struck and killed by the machine, White said.
The victim was believed to be about 46 years old and worked for Rampart Hydro Services based in Coraopolis, Pa., airport spokesman Chuck Cannon said.
White said the accident is being investigated jointly by the Denver police homicide and traffic-investigations units.
Cannon said victim-assistance personnel have been called to help the surviving member of the rubber removal crew and the driver of the runway sweeper.
The sweeper is a very large vehicle used to pick up debris on the runway and has a broom 22- to 24-feet in length, Cannon said.
The operator of the runway sweeper is a DIA employee; the rubber-removal crew was employed by a subcontractor, Cannon said.
Cannon said the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration has been notified and will conduct an investigation into the events that led to the death. Cannon said he didn’t know what occurred in the moments before the accident. He said the Denver Police Department and the coroner’s office also had been notified.
The runway was closed for a brief period of time but reopened by 8:45 a.m. The accident caused no disruption to airport operations because the airport’s other runways were able to handle departing and incoming aircraft, he said.
DIA is the fifth-busiest airport in the United States.
Herb Gibson, OSHA’s Denver area director, said he couldn’t recall any other runway deaths at the airport.
The last workplace death at the airport was in January 2005. A United Airlines worker died when chemicals used in a jet engine’s internal extinguisher device exploded in a hangar, Gibson said.
Before that, a contractor died in a Sept. 5, 2001, refueling accident. Joao Rodrigues, 24, was attaching a jet-fuel nozzle to a British Airways jet after the plane arrived at DIA from London.
The nozzle became disconnected, and a fireball engulfed Rodrigues, an employee of Aviation Service International Group, a ground-service contractor at the airport. He died six days later.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Staff writer Howard Pankratz can be reached at 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com.
