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’s who spoke at a ceremony Tuesday honoring Colorado Department of Transportation workers killed on the job.
Since 1929, 57 CDOT employees have died in the line of duty.
Kerry G. Lovelace, 43, of Denver died last fall after he fell off a truck while picking up traffic cones on Interstate 70. He isn’t included in that number because he worked for subcontractor American Barricade, not CDOT.
Forster and Lopez were in a cone zone when they were killed, as were 20 other CDOT workers.
Nationally, the annual number of work-zone fatalities has increased 45 percent in the past 10 years, including 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.
“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.
Accidents happen, George said.
But the agency does its best to keep its employees and the public safe.
Alan Martinez, a transportation maintenance worker who spoke, said that in a typical highway work zone, there is very little room among workers, their equipment and drivers.
Speeders, drivers who are experiencing road rage, drunken 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
