“Most of the parents were desperate…”

It’s time to truly engage victims and their kin

I’m reading the new book, “Columbine,” (Twelve/Hachette Book Group, 2009) and I can’t get Ron Hayes out of my head. Ron, from Fairhope, Alabama near Mobile, has been raising hell as a worker safety and victims’ rights activist since 1993, when his 19-year-old son Pat was killed on the job. Pat was "walking down the corn" — scraping the inside walls of a grain bin in Florida. As Pat knocked down the corn, 60 tons of it collapsed in a rush, suffocating him to death.

In “Columbine,” author Dave Cullen describes how the families of the 12 dead students, one dead teacher, and the 24 injured were misled and mistreated by public officials. Ron knows that pain.
Panicked parents of Columbine students frantically tried to learn the fate of their kids in the hours immediately after the shooting spree. “No word, for hours on end,” writes Cullen. Day stretched into night. The wife of the murdered teacher couldn’t sleep, still not knowing if her husband was dead or alive. She curled up with a pair of his socks.

The father of one murdered boy had his son’s death confirmed the next morning, flipping through a Denver newspaper. He stopped when he saw a half-page aerial photo of his son’s body stretched out on a sidewalk, next to a large pool of blood.

Fog of catastrophe
Chaos and confusion are partially to blame for the stonewalling and lack of cooperation that often confronts survivors and families of victims after a fatality — especially a large-scale catastrophe. At Columbine High, law enforcement officials had no clue how many perpetrators there might have been. A conspiracy was suspected due to scale of the attack. School officials needed a day to confirm how many of Columbine’s 2,000 students were safe, where they were, how many had been sent to hospitals.

“I knew Cassie was in there (the high school) somewhere,” said her father. “It was terrible to know she was on the other side of the fence and there was nothing we could do.”

“Most of the parents were desperate to learn how their child had died,” writes Cullen.
The official Jefferson County (Jeffco) Sheriff Department’s report had been promised in the summer of 1999, but as the first anniversary (April 20, 2000) approached county officials said the report still had six to eight weeks to go.

“Investigators had wrapped up most of their work in the first four months, but Jeffco was skittish about presenting the information,” writes Cullen. Finally, two families filed an open records request demanding to see the report immediately. They asked for videos made by the two killers, the killers’ journals, the 911 calls, and surveillance videos. The father of one of the families who filed wanted to compare the raw data with the written report. “They lie as a practice,” he said.

“Treated like dirt”
That’s what Ron Hayes discovered, too. “There was no help or justice for Pat. OSHA treated us like we were dirt,” Hayes told a Senate Labor Committee hearing in April, 2008. “Losing a loved one on the job is very difficult to deal with but when the very agency that is supposed to protect them, fails in correcting, investigating and prosecuting the company that killed your loved one, it is even harder to bare.”

A district judge in Colorado approved the request of the two Columbine families. Days later, the judge ordered the sheriff’s department to release its report to the public by May 15. What emerged was about seven hundred pages of who, what, where, when and how information. “The logistics were useful, but hardly what people had been waiting for,” writes Cullen. The essential question of why had been ducked.

Victims and their families are often kept in the dark, and the truth suppressed, out of fear of lawsuits. Columbine was no exception. The sheriff’s report described a complaint that had been filed 13 months before the shooting by a family whose son was the subject of death threats from one of the killers. Ten pages of annihilation rants from the same murderer’s web site had been obtained. The report spent one paragraph summarizing these warnings and two defending police actions, or inaction.

“The department claimed it had been unable to access one of the killer’s web site, despite the fact that officials had printed pages, filed them, and retrieved them within minutes of the attack on April 20, and had cited them at length in the search warrants issued before the bodies were found,” writes Cullen.

“Just heartbroken”
After an OSHA investigation into Pat’s death, agency investigators determined that his employer, Showell Farms, was guilty of six willful safety violations and recommended that the company pay more than $500,000 in fines. But OSHA's area director later reduced the fine to $42,000, citing a lack of clarity about whether OSHA's standards applied.

Ron Hayes and his family learned of the reduced fines and citations from a local news broadcast — despite repeated requests to OSHA for information. "When I saw it on TV that day," he recalled in article in Mother Jones magazine, "I was just heartbroken."

At last year’s Senate hearing Hayes testified, “These cases fall by the wayside and no one seems to care, except for the family.”

Misery at the church
Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., discovered this firsthand when he and three other senators visited with the families of 12 coal miners killed in the January 2, 2006 explosion at the Sago Mine in West Virginia. These families had been pained beyond the pale by a horrible communication breakdown. Gathered at the Sago Baptist Church, they first received word through widespread press announcements that 12 survivors were found and only one had died. Families ran outside, celebrating a “miracle.” Hours later completely contradictary and correct reports arrived. Only one miner survived while the other 12 had perished.

Kennedy said he was troubled to hear the families had not yet been involved in the accident investigation. He urged state and federal investigators to take time to talk to the relatives, who he said are extremely knowledgeable about the industry.

Congress jumps in
Earlier this year the “Protecting America’s Workers Act” was introduced in the U.S. House a Representatives. Among the bill’s provisions: a series of legal rights to allow “workers and their families to hold dangerous employers accountable,” according the language of the legislation.

These rights include:

● Workers and employee representatives have the right to contest OSHA’s failure to issue citations, classification of its citations, and proposed penalties.

● Injured workers, their families and families of workers who died in work-related incidents have the right to meet with investigators, receive copies of citations, and to have an opportunity to make a statement before any settlement negotiations.

● Any worker or their representative can object to a modification or withdrawal of a citation, and this entitles them to a hearing before the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.

You can argue whether these rights go too far, and Congress will. But it’s time, past time, to stop callous treatment of victims and their families and bring them in from the dark. They need to be engaged, not ignored.

By Dave Johnson, Editor

Accidental Anguish

Sago Mine survivors struggle with post-traumatic stress

Every day, 9,000 workers in the U.S. are injured on the job seriously enough to be considered at least temporarily disabled, according to NIOSH estimates. Sixteen workers are fatally injured each day.

But the toll goes beyond these numbers.

What about the coworkers who witnessed or survived these incidences — falls, amputations, crashes, cave-ins and electrocutions, for instance?

What about the rescue or recovery workers?

Are you prepared to handle cases of post-traumatic stress in your workplace?

The horror continues
On September 23, 2006, fire boss John Boni, 63, a survivor of the Sago Mine explosion that killed 12 miners earlier this year, committed suicide. Mr. Boni, who retired after the January 2nd blast, had detected low levels of methane in the mine five days before the explosion and reported it to a supervisor. But nothing came of it.

On August 29, Bill Chisolm, 47, an above-ground dispatcher at the mine who was on duty the morning of the explosion, committed suicide.

Both men shot themselves, police told The Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette.

"…the horror of the disaster continues to be a source of stress and pain today," relatives of the men who died at Sago said in a prepared statement. "There must have been enormous stress on Mr. Boni and Mr. Chisolm."

Almost 1,000 people attended Mr. Boni's visitation. But most of the 16 miners working in another section under the mountain at the time of explosion, who survived by climbing through dust and debris to the surface, decided not to go, according to an October 8th article in
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

"I guess I should have gone," a survivor told the paper.

"Avoidance" is one of three categories of symptoms signaling post-traumatic stress, according to the web site MedicineNet.com.

Avoidance refers to a person's attempts to avoid trauma-related thoughts or feelings and activities or situations that might trigger painful memories.

Days after the Sago blast, grief counselors arrived on the scene, prepared to hold weekly meetings with miners for as long as necessary. But only three people showed up, all juveniles, and the sessions were cancelled, according to the Post-Gazette.

Too many memories
Reliving the shock — "re-experiencing" — is the second major symptom of post-traumatic stress. "I think about it (the explosion) every time I'm in there," one of the surviving miners said in the article. More than ten months after the disaster, he often spends hours tossing in bed before finding sleep.

"Too many memories," another survivor told the Associated Press. "It brings tears to your eyes. Too many good men."

At least two of the surviving miners have left Sago to work in another mine.
"Your nerves stay shot," one of the miners who moved on told the Post-Gazette. "Every single noise, you jump. You're on edge all of the time."

This is "increased arousal" — the third category of symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress. Being on edge or being easily startled are forms of arousal. Nightmares and insomnia can also signal an aroused, agitated nervous system.

Watching the Weather Channel late at night sometimes helps relax the miner who often finds sleep elusive. "It's got that music to it," he said.

The last straw
Post-traumatic stress (PTS) doesn't make someone commit suicide "out of the blue," a psychologist told the Post-Gazette. But it can be the last straw, he said.

Sleeplessness, spontaneous crying, anxiety and fear — all occurrences of PTS — don't always show up immediately after the fact. All the more reason to be on alert if a shocking accident occurs in your workplace.

If such an incident does happen, consider the workers who might be affected:

• Those who were personally threatened with death or serious injury due to the accident.

• Workers who learned about the death, near death or serious injury of a relative or close friend.

• Those who witnessed the incident.

It's estimated that 5.2 million Americans ages 18-54 are diagnosed with PTS, according to the web site HealthyPlace.com. One study estimated that eight percent of Manhattan residents living below 110th Street (approximately 67,000 people) have probable PTS related to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

What are the antidotes?
"You just can't say, 'Counseling is available'," Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia told the Associated Press after privately meeting with people touched by the Sago tragedy earlier this month.

Many people, such as miners, construction workers, firefighters, police and others who pride themselves on toughness and steady nerves, are reluctant to seek out professional help.

That's a reason the relatives of some of the men who died at Sago publicly urged surviving miners to seek help. "There is no shame in acknowledging that the horror of the disaster continues to be a source of stress and pain today," they said in their statement.

That kind of message should be relayed by safety managers in the wake of a wrenching accident. Communicate, but don't counsel. Leave that to the experts.

The American Red Cross is now working with mental health professionals trained in trauma treatment. For information or referral, contact your local American Red Cross chapter, or the American Psychological Association at (800) 374-2721; (202) 336-5500.

After a traumatic accident, keep your eyes and ears open. Not just in the immediate days following, but months later as well. "You ain't going to live forever," one of the surviving miners told the Post-Gazette this month. "I guess we're all just walking dead men."

Believing that the future will be short is a way to block out the pain of post-traumatic stress — avoidance, as the psychologists say.