[saquin]

The body of Patrick Walters as it was removed from the trench that collapsed and killed him in 2002. His family's lawyers provided the photograph.

[Az Joe]

Damn, as I was reading that first paragraph I thought they were finally getting around to condeming Kennedy for murdering Mary Jo.

[Old Professer]

A trench box is essential to work like this, but some days the ground is so unstable that the work can't be done by hand at all.

This company should be put out of business.

I used to be a safety official; you can't ever stop preaching regardless how deaf the ears.

[DB]

The company should be severely punished BUT the worker is also responsible. It is your life to protect. Doing something you know is dangerous with unnecessary risk is your fault. At least that's my opinion...

[agitator]

I can solve this problem, pick up Linda Moeves, Mr. Dimling and the acting area director, Dennis A. Collins, and let them rot in prison until they die. They deserve it.

[okie01]

Odd that the New York Times would devote so much space to this tragic story. Doesn't the Times believe that more federal regulation will solve everything?

How could an agency with such noble intentions as OSHA fail?

[Richard Kimball]

We had a case where a high-pressure concrete injection pipe ruptured and hit two guys. One of them had skull shards blown into his brain. As my crew was packaging the guys, they told the police not to let the contractor remove any of the equipment, but they had it down 10 minutes after the guys were transported, and the police just watched. OSHA is terrible about citing little garbage stuff and fumbling the big stuff. Trench rescues suck. They're practically always body recoveries.

[LibWhacker]

That picture kills me. Linda Moeves gets the lion's share of the blame here, imo. Too bad she can't be forced to sleep in that muddy hole every night for the rest of her life. Maybe then she'd remember her responsibilities.

[Lancey Howard]

I think the lesson here is: Listen to your own vibes. Always.

[familyop]

Accidents involving construction men being buried in trenches happen quite often. And the workers do as they are expected to do, or they have the choice of getting out of the business. ...like so many other occupations. The young man had a family to feed and knew better than to refuse to do or to delay any part of his work.

It would be easy enough to build a quick installation kit for structural support in trenches if something like that isn't already on the market. Something like that could be fastened together and lowered into a trench with the backhoe and a chain.

Will we help conservatism by deriding murdered peasants for lazy minded bosses? I don't think so.

[Rennes Templar]

"But no employer, she insisted, cares more about the welfare of her workers than she."

Right.

[par4]

There was still mud in his ears. Patrick Walters was laid out in his coffin for the visitation, his face puffy and bruised, his ears still flecked with dried bits of clay. They all noticed.

As soon as I got to this part, I knew that there was a whole lot of hyperbole being tossed around here. Obviously, there are a whole lot of unsafe operators out there but this article is designed to enrage the reader. Either that, ot the Mr. Walters wasn't tended to by a mortician before his funeral, which seems rather unlikely.

[Dan Evans]

I'm learning a lot about the technology of ditch digging.

We've been digging ditches for thousands of years but people still get killed because the technology is taken for granted by too many people. Technology is in people, not books -- someone has too read the books.

We no longer have the technology to go to the moon. That's because the people who did it thirty years ago have retired. Most of the men who designed the space shuttle have retired and now astronauts are dying because the political appointees responsible don't understand the technology.