College Safety Inspection Leads to $79,000 fine for Safety Violations

Pierce is slammed with a $79,000 fine from safety and health code penalties and violations on campus after an inspection by the washington state Department of Labor and Industries.

Pierce college currently faces a total of $79,200 in penalty charges for violating employee health and safety codes. The college has to make corrections in addition to paying all the fees or further fines will be issued.

The inspection took place in May following a complaint that Pierce was allowing employees to operate in unsafe confined spaces. These spaces included AC access tunnels, manholes, and elevator shafts that were said to not be up to code in the campus.

The inspection resulted in an assessment of 19 serious code violations found around buildings in the college. A penalty charge was assessed and Pierce was given a notice to pay at the beginning of November. The college is in the process of an appeal.

“We responded to a complaint about the boiler rooms in the Lakewood campus,” said Elaine Fischer, an employee with the Department of Labor and Industries. “Confined spaces like boiler rooms need to be properly regulated because they can be very dangerous.”

When the inspection team arrived, the campus was thoroughly checked for hazards.

“The point of the inspections are to make sure that employees can safely work in spaces that may not be habitable as an employee workspace without precautions,” said Fischer. “Trash compactors, manholes, and any maintenance entrance needs to be identified and approached with the proper knowledge and training.”

The campus was found without the correct warning signs marking confined work spaces. Pierce was also charged with not training their employees to safely work in manholes and vents.

Some of the serious violations included employees not performing atmospheric testing and the college lacking atmospheric testing and monitoring equipment, ventilation equipment, fall protection equipment, and emergency equipment.

College administrators have been reviewing the penalties and have appealed to the department’s penalties. A few of the cited hazards have been fixed but several of the violations still need to be corrected.

The notice claimed that these corrections needed to be made as early as December 6th. In addition to paying the fines and following the citations, notices of the inspection are to be made available to all employees of Pierce college. Confined spaces must be marked for anyone who might not know if it’s unsafe.

“We’ve sent out a notice to all employees explaining the dangers of confined spaces and to avoid any manhole, lift, or maintenance site,” said the vice president of administrative services Choi Halladay. “Warning signs have been posted in all the places cited as unsafe by the department of labor and industries.”

Representatives have been sent from Pierce college to discuss the fines and the payment. As of now, the fine is the same amount.

Halladay and fellow administrators are expecting to get answers from the hearing soon. “I can’t say that I know of any other fines charged to the college,” said Halladay. “The current fine is being contested and an appeal has been made by us to analyze the penalty charges.”

Budget analyst Debby Aleckson said that the college has gotten more time to deal with any citations. The payment for the charges is still being figured out.

“As of now, no invoice has been sent,” Aleckson said. “The college is still in the process of appeal so not much has been approved for in terms of payment.”

Pierce is required to post the Notice of Assessment at all the locations of the unsafe spaces. The Department of Labor and Industries also posted the inspection in their public records.