Sunday, August 21, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Peril, but not like the old days

Hoover Dam Bypass workers have it better than those who built the dam

From a metal cage hanging from a crane about 600 feet above the Colorado River, project engineer Jeff St. John uses a surveying tool to mark locations on a cliff wall in Black Canyon. Bonnie Klamerus, structures manager for the Federal Highway Administration, looks on. A surveyor on the opposite side of the canyon used a focused beam of light to tell St. John where to make his marks, and he "moved" the cage by relaying instructions over the radio to a crane operator. Photo by Clint Karlsen. With a clear view of the river about 800 feet below, workers install a metal screen to capture debris before a blast at the future site of the Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge. Photo by Clint Karlsen. Workers on the Arizona side of Black Canyon prepare for a blast that will clear the way for the construction of footings for the Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge. Photo by Clint Karlsen.

On the edge of a sun-baked cliff hundreds of feet above the Colorado River, a worker leans into a jackleg drill and bores a hole for explosives in the solid rock of Black Canyon.

It is one of the hottest, loudest and dirtiest jobs on the entire Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge project, but it could be worse.

It could be 1931.

Though they work out in the elements and among heavy equipment and steep terrain that could easily kill them, laborers at the bridge site still have it a whole lot better than the men who came before them.

Boulder City resident Lee Tilman, now 92, drove a truck in Black Canyon during the construction of Hoover Dam.

"Summers were extremely hot, as they are now, and during the winter, with the breeze coming up the canyon from the south, it could be very uncomfortable down there," Tilman said.

Today's required safety measures, such as wearing a hard hat or tying off to a backup line before scaling a canyon wall, were optional early on in the dam project, if such safety equipment was available at all.

"It was pretty much a free-for-all," said Dennis McBride, curator of the Boulder City Museum and Historical Association.

Depending on the source, the official death toll for the project was between 96 and 112, but even the larger number is undoubtedly low, McBride said.

"The only time they counted someone is when he was killed dead on the spot," he said.

The official casualty list does not include workers who were injured on the job but died off-site, let alone those who succumbed years later to illnesses related to dust or toxic fumes, McBride said.

Scores more were seriously hurt -- sometimes permanently -- during work at the dam, though the actual number never was officially counted and remains largely untold.

Throughout the project, the Industrial Workers of the World and other unions railed against conditions at the site, but the laborers themselves were left with little recourse after "the first good strike failed" in August 1931, McBride said.

Of the men who joined the strike, only those deemed trustworthy were hired back by the consortium of six companies brought in to build the dam.

"And, of course, that was a lot of desperate, hungry guys," McBride said.

"There was 30 percent of the working force that was out of work in the U.S.," Tilman said. "We didn't have a lot of the safeguards you have now like unemployment insurance, so it was really about the most important thing in life just to have a good job."

As former dam laborer Herb Jones, now in his 90s, told Review-Journal columnist John L. Smith last year, "We didn't have any safety precautions in those days, or if they had them they were never enforced."

Unfortunately, complaining about that wasn't really an option, Jones said. "There were 5,000 people waiting to take your job -- waiting until one of us got killed or gave it up."

One of the workers' only victories came when a federal judge upheld a Nevada restriction on the use of internal combustion engines inside mine shafts and other tunnels.

But even that came too late for those who labored in clouds of carbon monoxide to build the temporary tunnels used to divert the Colorado River around the dam site during construction.

"A lot of men were gassed that way," McBride said.

By contrast, the high scalers who worked from rope-mounted wooden seats hundreds of feet above the ground experienced few accidents. "One of the most spectacular jobs on the project was also one of the safest," McBride said.

State Archivist Guy Rocha said many deaths on the project can be traced back to the push to start work on the dam early, a political move aimed at creating jobs and quieting the Hoover administration's Depression-era critics.

"As bad as the conditions were, they got better as the project went (along)," Rocha said. "The first year was the worst ... and the amenities weren't there. Boulder City wasn't finished yet."

Mitch Lipsky is project superintendent for Roy E. Ladd Inc., the subcontractor in charge of drilling, blasting and excavating the canyon walls where the bypass bridge is now being built.

Lipsky has worked in the field for 33 years, and he can't help but cringe when he watches documentaries about the construction of Hoover Dam.

In almost every old photo or scratchy piece of film he sees what would be major safety infractions today: a huge bucket of rock or concrete held in the air by a bolt with no safety clasp and a cable with no backup line; a platform with a wooden railing used to shuttle two dozen men or more across the canyon on wires strung overhead; a jackleg drill that is fed compressed air through a poorly secured hose.

"If the air hose comes loose from that drill, it could knock you off the face, break your leg, open up your head, kill you," Lipsky said. "Man these guys were brave, I'm telling you."

Old footage of the blasting -- Ladd's area of expertise -- is especially hard for Lipsky to watch.

Present day blasts are carefully timed and sequenced down to the millisecond, and each demolition site is engineered beforehand to limit ground vibration and flying debris. Metal screens are bolted to the canyon wall to keep rock from raining down on the dam works and the river.

"Back in the old days ... you could just let it go," Lipsky said. "They were restricted to shooting it all at once, and if a hole was drilled (for explosives) you filled it all the way up."

Some of the old films even show people calmly watching huge blasts, despite being close enough to be killed by flying debris. There is barely a hard hat in sight, Lipsky said.

"These guys were all wearing downtown hats and caps. People know more now. Technology has taught us there's a better way to blast," he said.

Michael Motil, project manager for bypass bridge general contractor Obayashi/PSM, said, "There's no doubt at all that it used to be acceptable to lose people on a job like this."

Not anymore.

"Our goal is to send everyone home in the same condition they showed up for work," Motil said.

Hard hats, steel-toed boots, safety harnesses, and day-glo vests are now standard equipment. Safety reminders are posted everywhere, including two billboard-size messages stenciled on the site's largest crane: "Create Safety" and "Avert Danger Before It Arises."

The wooden platform crammed with workers has been replaced by something called a "man basket," basically a reinforced steel cage the size of a small motel room that is painted bright yellow and hung securely from a crane.

The man basket for the less-accessible Arizona side of the canyon can carry as many as 15 people or support two drills and four men as they bore holes in the sheer cliff walls.

"We have the benefit of some of the capabilities of modern equipment, and yet the challenges of the site remain essentially the same: extremely harsh conditions, extreme temperatures, and much of the work still today has to be done manually or at least initiated manually," said Dave Zanetell, who manages the bridge project for the Federal Highway Administration. "We certainly tip our hats to those who did that in front of us, but some of the conditions are the same."

In other words, working on the bridge is no picnic either.

"It's very dangerous, very steep work," Lipsky said. "You're a thousand feet above the Colorado River. Everything is very vertical."

And shade is in short supply. In July, when the mercury rose past 115 in Las Vegas, temperatures in the canyon regularly topped 120 degrees.

"The rock throws it right back at you," Lipsky said of the heat. "You're just like an egg in a frying pan."

To compensate, the average worker consumes at least two gallons of water a day, "plus their Gatorade and other drinks," he said.

Ladd provides water-filled Camelback packs and water jugs for all of its workers. Obayashi has set up ice machines, shaded areas and coolers filled with bottled water at locations throughout the site. The cabs of most cranes and construction vehicles are air-conditioned.

"They're equipped quite well to deal with the heat," Motil said.

"You just get through it," Lipsky added.

There are about 100 people working on the bridge right now, and that number is expected to top out at about 350 when construction moves out into the canyon next year.

When the bridge opens in 2008, about 1,200 laborers will have had a hand in the project, including those who built the bridge approaches in Nevada and Arizona. That is a far cry from the roughly 20,000 workers who came and went during the five years it took to build the dam.

"Big bridges are not typically huge, labor intensive efforts," Zanetell said.

Even with all the new equipment and safety measures now in use, Motil insists the overall working conditions in Black Canyon haven't changed much in 75 years.

"I think they're very similar. We have better equipment, but the man still has to stand out in the weather and work," he said. "Construction hasn't changed that much.

"In this valley, it's a different breed of a guy who wants to build a bridge. He could go sit in a nice, cool casino. It takes a person who wants to build a part of history."