Yeager to Consider Tougher Contractor Rules for Tenants

Yeager Airport tenants would be required to make sure their contractors are properly licensed, under a proposal airport manager Rick Atkinson plans to make next week.

Atkinson said that he developed the proposal during discussions with Kanawha County Commissioner Kent Carper following the Thursday death of a worker building a new hangar.

"When you're looking back on something, it's always 20-20," Atkinson said. "We probably should have done this before."

In Thursday's accident, 46-year-old Bobbie Roger McCray of Selma, N.C., was crushed to death by a roof beam.

McCray was working for a North Carolina firm, Wayne's Erecting LLC, that had not obtained a required West Virginia contractor's license, according to the state Division of Labor.

When the accident happened, McCray was trying to bolt portions of the superstructure together while on a scissors lift, a type of scaffolding. The steel structure fell onto the lift, crushing McCray, officials said.

Yeager Airport officials were paying for the new hangar, but the project was contracted out by Executive Air, which handles general aviation at Yeager.

Executive Air officials did not return phone calls Thursday. On Friday, company president Scott Miller issued a prepared statement that said his company's "due diligence did not reveal" that Wayne's Erecting did not have a West Virginia license.

Atkinson said that Yeager's own policies require it to ensure that airport contractors it hires have proper insurance and licenses.

Under the proposal he plans to submit to the board, airport tenants such as Executive Air would have to follow those same contracting policies.

"We will establish those as minimum standards in order to do business," Atkinson said. He said a board meeting would be scheduled for next week, but a specific time had not been chosen.

Stan Elliott, area director for the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said that steel erection companies are supposed to plan their work to account for maximum winds, along with a factor of safety. Loads are supposed to be lifted and controlled by cranes capable of withstanding these winds. If the wind speed goes above what the lifting plan is designed for, workers should wait until the wind dies down, Elliott said.

Elliott said that the fatal accident suggests that something was wrong with the lifting plan, or that the company was not following that plan.

"I'm assuming - and this is very preliminary - that [the steel beam] was not supported adequately, or it wouldn't have fallen," Elliott said.

Steve White, director of the Affiliated Construction Trades Foundation, a coalition of unionized construction companies, said, "A company that is willing to cut corners in licensing is a company that very well may have cut corners in safety and this is the result."

Last year, Yeager ran into problems during the clear-cutting work - visible from Interstate 79 just outside of Charleston - that was part of a project to extend the runway safety, overrun areas and relocated a section of the main taxiway.

Loggers performing the work were temporarily shut down for repeated environmental violations, and the state Department of Environmental Protection cited the project for violating its stormwater control permit.

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