At a Queens, New York waste transfer station, investigators read the signs of a tragic story: Harel Dahan, 23, descended a ladder into a stinking well that caught runoff water from the recycling yard, and was overcome by hydrogen sulfide fumes. His father, Shlomo Dahan, 49, went down after him but was also overcome by the fumes. Rene Francisco Rivas, 52, tried to help the two men but met the same fate. A firefighter wearing protective clothing and enclosed breathing apparatus retrieved the three workers’ bodies from the well.
Shlomo Dahan’s company, S. Dahan Piping and Heating Corporation, had been contracted by the Regal Recycling Company to vacuum out the well, and Rivas was a Regal employee. The New York Times’ Robert D. McFadden notes that OSHA fined the plant $1,500 in 2006 after a worker was crushed to death by a wheel loader, and identified several serious violations at the facility in an inspection conducted earlier this year.
In a follow-up Times article, Ray Rivera points out that this kind of scenario – where one worker is overcome by fumes, and other workers die trying to save their colleague – is all too common, especially in the waste management and sewage industries:
