Pueblo’s largest steel mill was fined more than $103,000 after it was cited for a number of workplace safety issues, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration said Friday.
, and fined the company for 12 of them, mostly for not having proper safety protections in place such as fire extinguishers and guardrails, or routinely inspecting large overhead cranes. OSHA does not count the violations individually and often bundles them together, so the agency reports it cited the company with only 10 serious violations.
The facility was also cited for not repairing an overhead crane to operate safely, a violation the company was also cited for during a 2013 inspection at another plant it owns in Claymont, Delaware.
OSHA also cited Evraz for exposing workers to a low-speed squirrel cage fan missing its cover and located in a crane operator’s cab. The centrifugal fans move air within the cabin and don’t actually catch or affect squirrels, but get their name because they resemble a hamster wheel. There was no fine assessed for that violation.
The fines totaled $103,820, OSHA said.
“We are in the process of reviewing the findings with OSHA and will address them in short order through appropriate corrective actions to prevent re-occurrence,” a company spokesman said in an e-mail. “At Evraz North America, safety is our first priority, and a moral imperative. The relentless focus on safety … has significantly reduced the OSHA recordable incident frequency rate at our facilities.”
The company has the right to appeal the fines or seek a reduction in the next 15 days.
“Evraz needs (to) involve their workers in identifying and correcting hazardous conditions to ensure more effective safety and health management systems,” David Nelson, OSHA’s area director in Englewood, said in a statement. “Evraz needs to fix these hazards before someone is injured or worse.”
Inspectors found Evraz had not properly inspected overhead cranes or prevent workers from toppling equipment such as rail cars, the inspections records show.
Several violations were corrected during the inspection, records show. Others must be rectified by July 27.
The inspection was part of OSHA’s National Emphasis Program on Amputations, which targets workplaces with machinery and equipment that can cause an amputation in order to reduce their occurrence.
Evraz North America is one of the largest steel and mining businesses in the world.
The facility once called Evraz Rocky Mountain Steel has been cited by OSHA in the past, including a $50,000 fine in 2011 for continued exposures to amputation hazards, which it had been cited for in 2009.
A worker was killed at the plant in April 2012 when he was run over by a truck, OSHA records show.
