Victim of John Amos accident identified as South Carolina man

By George Hohmann
Charleston Daily Mail - September 24, 2008

Content Source

A pipefitter who died from a fall at Appalachian Power's John Amos Plant has been identified as Gary C. DeLoache, 63, of West Columbia, South Carolina.

DeLoache was a contractor for Shaw Construction, Appalachian Power spokesman Phil Moye said.

Emergency workers were notified of the accident at 2:20 a.m. Tuesday, Moye said.

Joe Haynes, the plant's community relations manager, said DeLoache probably fell 16 to 24 feet. It was unclear if he fell off a ladder while climbing up to scaffolding or if he fell off of the scaffolding itself.

Shaw Construction notified the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration of the accident, Haynes said.

Barry Carpenter, Shaw's site manager, said, the accident is still under investigation.

Moye said DeLoache was working in the area of the Unit 3 precipitator. Unit 3 has a 1,300-megawatt capacity.

It is the largest unit at Amos. The plant's other two units are 800 megawatts each. A precipitator removes particulate matter such as fly ash from a unit's exhaust gas.

Unit 3 was taken out of service earlier this month so contractors can tie a new scrubber to the unit and perform some maintenance. More than 3,000 workers are on site on a typical day, although all work was halted following the accident, Moye said.

Haynes said, "Something like this is devastating to us. While a construction worker, he is still a part of our extended family. It's devastating when anyone is injured. A fatality is as bad as it gets. At this point the primary focus is the investigation and determining what happened, why it happened and what we can do to keep it from happening again."

There were two fatal accidents at the Amos plant within six months in late 2003 and early 2004.

Timothy Siders II, 28, of Gallipolis Ferry, was killed in an Oct. 31, 2003, fall at the plant. Siders was employed by Babcock & Wilcox. After that accident, Babcock & Wilcox was cited and fined $5,000 by OSHA.

Jamie Brooks Harris, 23, of Millwood, died in a March 12, 2004, accident. Harris was an employee of Onyx Industrial Services. He was cleaning ductwork when he walked into an opening and fell about 25 feet into a vertical duct. Onyx was fined $6,300 for a serious safety violation by OSHA.

The Shaw Group Inc. is headquartered in Baton Rouge, La. The company announced in June that it had been awarded a $50 million contract by Appalachian Power to provide all phases of construction services to refurbish and upgrade the electrostatic precipitator at the Amos plant.