After years of successful work in limiting injuries, big industrial owners and contractors are recognizing the need to shift more effort to the stubbornly persistent problem of fatalities.
Natasha Arnold is the only 5’1” female carpenter’s apprentice working on San Francisco’s Transbay Transit Center—the biggest transportation terminal on the West Coast.
Late one spring night, Jose Lopez jumped a 10-ft concrete wall at the U.S.-Mexico border at Tijuana carrying only the $600 he had saved for his crossing.
At the end of the first day Tony Gerde, then 22, worked as a rodbuster—carrying rebar like a pack animal—he went home a wreck—with bruised shoulders, raw skin and his body aching from head to toe.
When Terry Jacobsen showed up for this first day of work with the Idaho Transportation Dept. in April 1959, he wasn’t thinking about starting a career in the transportation industry. He was barely 20 years old and just needed a job.