Contractor fined for fatal bridge collapse on Outer Banks

The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration determined that a 42-year-old welder was torch-cutting crossbeams on a part of the bridge where the company discarded concrete for removal on April 14. The concrete’s weight caused the structure to collapse and the welder to fall more than 50 feet to his death, authorities said.

The state Department of Transportation hired PCL Civil Constructors to handle the bridge dismantling, and OSHA issued two serious violations against the company for failure to use engineering surveys or calculations to control the structure’s stability and avoid unplanned collapses and overloading bridge sections beyond their weight capacity, exposing workers to struck-by and crush-by hazards.

OSHA has proposed $23,210 in penalties against the company, which can appeal the decision.

“PCL Civil Constructors violated federal safety standards and a worker needlessly died as a result,” OSHA Area Director Kimberley Morton said in a statement. "If they had followed well-known standards, this tragic loss of life could have been prevented."

Power was restored six days later, and PCL agreed to pay $10.3 million to businesses, homeowners and vacationers who sued over the outage.