GRAND JURY UPS ANTE IN MTA DEATHS.

Byline: Lee Condon and David Bloom Daily News Staff Writers

A harried worker's grab of the wrong chain, a foreman's hurried re-rigging of a bin of construction debris, the accidental snagging of an electrical line.

Those seemingly inconsequential events, amid the bustle and roar of subway tunnel construction 80 feet beneath Hollywood Boulevard, led to Jaime Pasillas' death last winter and a $70,500 state fine of contractor Tutor-Saliba/Perini in the summer.

But with the parade of state and Metropolitan Transportation Authority safety inspectors before a Los Angeles grand jury Wednesday, those events are undergoing an unprecedented scrutiny, raising the stakes on worker safety in one of the nation's biggest-ever public works project.

For the first time, someone could face criminal charges.

``It scares the hell out of employers that they could be held criminally liable for a worker's death,'' said Bob D'Amato, director of the American Safety Institute. ``Under the labor code, they can be charged for any serious hazard or a death.''

For years, the California Occupational Health and Safety Administration has attempted to regulate the MTA's contractors on the subway through citations, stop-work orders and fines of as much as several hundred thousand dollars.

The numerous rail contractors had several close calls, such as out-of-control locomotives and exploding acetylene tanks that injured, burned and maimed workers.

Chain snapped

But the MTA always proudly pointed out that no one had died on the job - nobody until Feb. 15, when a thin chain snapped, sending a bin full of two tons of construction debris crashing into Pasillas' head.

By October, the death toll had reached three. Tutor-Saliba employee Eleazar Montes and Traylor Bros./Frontier-Kemper employee Brian Bailey also died in separate tunnel accidents at Universal City.

To Sally Pasillas, the $70,500 fine against subway contractor Tutor-Saliba for safety violations, found after her husband was killed on the job, was not justice.

``Somebody should go to jail. Something has to be done so they don't continue to disregard safety,'' Pasillas said. ``You don't jeopardize someone's life and ruin a family just to get the job done. They don't have a right to be reckless with someone else's life.''

A $70,500 fine does not make an impression on contractors being paid hundreds of millions of dollars on the subway project, she said.

Tutor-Saliba President Ron Tutor of Sylmar could not be reached for comment Wednesday. Earlier this week he declined comment on the grand jury investigation.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, an MTA board member, applauded the grand jury probe.

``If somebody's criminally negligent, they should pay the price,'' Yaroslavsky said. ``Otherwise, where's the accountability?''

A report last summer by Cal-OSHA inspector Joe Doyle laid out a picture of a just-get-it-done culture, ramrodded by a screaming foreman who one worker said berated and shoved employees out of the way if they were perceived as going too slow.

One subway worker, Ben Anzalado, told Doyle he found the faulty chain used to lift the muck bucket. That chain, it turned out, was too thin for such work and was further compromised by the way a foreman re-rigged it, the report said.

As the bin was moved by an overhead gantry through the tunnel, the gantry snagged on its electrical line and Pasillas was sent to unsnag it. As he returned, the chain snapped. His head was crushed against the wall, and he died instantly.

``One comment (from Anzalado) that really stands out came when I asked him about safety meetings,'' Doyle wrote. ``He stated, `Safety ends when you enter the tunnel; the bosses don't care about employees.' ''

Unsafe conditions

Throughout the report, Doyle noted unsafe work conditions, such as exposed steel poles sticking up from the tunnel floor without covering caps and the footwide plank that workers negotiated, several feet above the ground, as they prepared to pour the tunnel's permanent concrete floor.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office has declined to comment on its investigation into Pasillas' death and whether it is before the grand jury. But MTA and Cal-OSHA officials confirmed their employees testified on the Pasillas case before the grand jury Wednesday.

Several of the MTA's own safety investigators appeared before the grand jury Wednesday after being summoned, said one MTA source close to the case who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Others are expected to be called later as the investigation continues, the MTA source said.

For charges to be filed, 14 of the 23 grand jury members must vote in favor of indictment.

One MTA safety inspector, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the agency had a difficult time forcing contractors to follow the rules, particularly in Hollywood, where poor planning gave subway builders too much control over how they wanted to run their jobs.

``They thought they were the professionals and none of us knew what we were doing,'' the inspector said.

Design changes

MTA officials largely acquiesced to the contractors, leading to a series of questionable design changes, corner cutting and a spectacular sinkhole that swallowed nearly three lanes of Hollywood Boulevard in 1995 near Barnsdall Park, sources said.

``The sense you always got from the outside was they had a good public-relations front about safety, but beneath the ground they would do whatever it would take to finish the job,'' said Richard Katz, the former Sylmar assemblyman who monitored the MTA as chairman of the Assembly Transportation Commission.

``They knew they were running over budget and behind schedule, so they were cutting corners,'' Katz said. ``They were putting all this money in this hole and were feeling tremendous pressure on everybody to cut costs.''

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Photo

PHOTO Sally Pasillas enjoys an evening out with her husband, Jaime, in August 1996. He was killed during subway construction work last year.