Paul Forster and Eladio Lopez should have returned to their families after a day on the job behind a string of orange safety cones four years ago. Instead, a drunken student going the wrong way on Interstate 25 mowed them down, cutting short their lives as they worked to make the highway safer.
They “were out there making a living fixing the roads for the people of Colorado,” said Joyce Bunkers, a friend of Forster who spoke at a ceremony today honoring Colorado Department of Transportation workers killed on the job.
Since 1929, 57 CDOT employees have died in the line of duty — and that doesn’t include contractors. Forster and Lopez are among 22 of them who were in cone zones when the accidents occurred.
Forster, 43, left behind a wife and two stepchildren. Lopez, 50, had a wife, three sons and four grandchildren.
Nationally, the annual number of work-zone fatalities has increased 45 percent in the last 10 years, accounting for 1,010 fatalities in 2006, according to the Federal Highway Administration.
A white marble monument in the shape of a mountain bearing the names of all the CDOT workers who died while performing their jobs rests in front of the agency’s Denver headquarters.
Attendees at the half-hour ceremony left orange carnations on the stone.
“Thankfully, we did not have to add any names this year,” CDOT Executive Director Russell George told the crowd of about 30 workers and others who attended the ceremony.
A worker for a state highway subcontractor who died in September after he fell off a truck while picking up traffic cones wasn’t added because he wasn’t a CDOT employee. The truck ran over the employee of American Barricade Rental twice.
Accidents happen, said George. But the agency does its best to keep its employees and the public safe.
The annual remembrance-day ceremony was held during National Work Zone Awareness week.
Alan Martinez, a transportation maintenance worker who spoke, said that in a typical highway work zone, there is very little room between workers, their equipment and drivers.
Speeders, drivers who are experiencing road rage, drunk and careless drivers all pose a threat to those working on roads, Martinez said.
“We ask motorists to think about the people working in the zone. Please slow down, be patient and respect the lives of the highway workers. We are not just cones to be run over, to be hit. We have families to go home to.”
Tom McGhee: 303-954-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com
