Florida Painting Firm Fined $877,000 After Worker’s Fatal Fall From Savannah Bridge

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration has fined a Florida commercial painting contractor $877,000 – one of the largest OSHA fines in recent years – six months after a worker fell from a bridge near Savannah, Georgia.

Seminole Equipment Co., based in Tarpon Springs, Florida, failed to provide fall protection and life jackets to workers painting the Interstate 95 bridge over the Ogeechee River, OSHA said in a bulletin Tuesday. Painters were removing scaffolding when Jose Hernandez Garcia fell and drowned in the river, according to April news reports.

OSHA also fined L.C. Whitford Co., the controlling employer at the bridge site, some $26,480.

The companies now have 15 days to pay the penalties or contest the findings.

Seminole Equipment has faced other actions from OSHA in recent years. In 2020, the safety agency fined the firm $102,399 for willful violations at another Georgia site. The penalty was reduced to $80,000, OSHA information indicates. In Florida, Seminole Equipment has been involved in 12 contested workers’ compensation claims in the last decade, according to Florida’s Office of Judges of Compensation Claims. One of those claims came in a bridge fall in Gadsden County: The worker fell 45 feet, injuring his ankle, hand and arm.

Topics Florida