Mothers of work accident victims testify before Senate panel

CARSON CITY – Mothers of workers killed on the job told legislators today that their sons would be alive if they had received proper safety training.

“If Travis had been trained he would not have risked his own life,” Debra Koehler-Fergen said during a Senate Commerce and Labor Committee hearing.

Her son Travis died on Feb. 2, 2007, when he went into a sewer manhole at The Orleans to try to pull out fellow worker Richard Luzier, who had gone into the hole to unplug a clogged pipe. Both men died from breathing toxic fumes.

“I lay some of the deaths (of construction workers) at the feet of Nevada OSHA,” said Koehler-Fergen, who testified by teleconference from Las Vegas.

“They need more on-the-job training,” Tracy Carillo added. “I am not placing blame, but there needs to be more appropriate safety training.”

Carillo added that workers often take unnecessary chances because they face deadline pressure from their employers to complete construction projects.

Carillo, of Fernley, lost her son, Brian Spartan, when he fell 42 feet from a construction site in Reno in March 2007. He lived for about two weeks before dying.