Construction accidents stories win Pulitzer Prize: Construction workers had been dying at a rate of one every six weeks in the building boom on the Las Vegas Strip.
Posted by: Doug in Disability, Disease Claims, Job Accidents, Negligence Cases, Premises liability, Slip and Fall Accidents, Workers Compensation, brain injuryThe Las Vegas Sun won a Pulitzer Prize for a series of stories exposing the causes of construction site injuries. Construction workers had been dying at a rate of one every six weeks in the $32 billion building boom on the Las Vegas Strip. But deaths stopped last year after the Las Vegas Sun exposed serious safety flaws on the sites and detailed how lax oversight by safety regulators failed to prevent accidents. Twelve workers had died in 18 months. But after the improvements, the deaths stopped. No workers have died since June 2008. The Sun’s series site includes stories, a video, an interactive and documents from OSHA concerning the deaths, plus follow-up stories.
The stories forced state and federal investigations and became the subject of hearings in the U.S. House and Senate. Sens. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Harry Reid and others sent a letter to President Bush demanding safety reforms in the Labor Department.
As the Sun pursued the story, the newspaper reported on cozy relationships existing between safety regulators and builders. Angered by the revelations and continuing death toll, workers walked off the job at MGM Mirage’s City Center, shutting down the largest private commercial development in U.S. history until the contractors agreed to safety improvements.
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