Did you hear about a municipal industrial accident that occurred on July 10 at the P Street Waste Water Treatment Plant in Fort Smith involving a 40-ton boom truck/ crane that resulted in debilitating injuries to a longtime city employee?
No? Neither has anyone else.
The fallout from the incident has resulted in the man who rendered aid to the victim at the scene resigning from his job earlier in the month.
Dalton Coody, who had worked in various maintenance positions for the city “off and on” since 2007 and later worked in law enforcement before returning to Fort Smith in March of 2017, said on Thursday that the accident “has been completely covered up by the city” and says his complaints about how the work environment “changed” after the accident and his treatment by supervisors in the following weeks left him little choice but to tender his resignation.
The city of Fort Smith responded to a Freedom of Information request for information on Thursday through attorney Douglas Carson with the city’s representative law firm Daily and Woods which confirms the accident did occur.
That letter can be accessed here.
On July 10 of this year, city employee Mark Cheatwood was operating a 40-ton crane/boom truck on a bridge that passes over an access creek next to the wastewater treatment plant while lifting a 9000-pound pump being picked up under the bridge for a contracted job.
According to Coody, despite the crane’s safety legs being extended as far as possible because of the location of the boom truck on the bridge, the heavy equipment toppled over, throwing Cheatwood to the creek bed/ditch below. The report says he fell “30-40 feet and was face down in the mud and the rocks”.
Cheatwood reportedly suffered a broken back and sternum, a broken arm and wrist, two broken legs and other injuries, One of his legs later had to be amputated, according to Coody.
“I was the first person that got to him after the crane threw him off the bridge,” said Coody. “He was in bad shape and there was one (supervisor) just standing on the bridge looking down at him that didn’t even bother to call 911 or anything.”
“The first thing I heard was that ‘Mark didn’t have the stabilizing legs on the crane fully extended and wasn’t wearing a seat belt,” said Coody. “Well, the job wasn’t even really ours to start with…he was lifting the pump for a contractor. He had the legs extended as far as they could given the circumstances and the reason he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt is because the city opted out of a $500 seat belt package on a $250,000 piece of equipment. And they were already looking for excuses to make it look like Mark was at fault. “
Coody said he stayed with Cheatwood and rendered what aid he could until paramedics arrived.
There has been nothing made public about the incident by the city since it occurred and although Inside Fort Smith received information about the accident in late August we did not have the name of the victim or the circumstances surrounding the incident until this week. A statement that was sought through the FOIA request on the lack of information provided to the public about the incident did not elicit a response.
The response from the FOIA request for any information on witnesses to the event states “It is the City’s information that no one witnessed the accident. Therefore there is no document to produce.”
However, the accident report does state that Coody was the first on the scene and “missed witnessing it by seconds”.
“I didn’t witness the crane actually topple but I was down there just as soon as I saw what happened,” said Coody. “They took statements from everyone so they’re playing word games. I guess you should have asked for copies of the statements they took from us.”
“He was in bad shape, and from the beginning, all the city and the supervisors have been concerned with keeping the whole thing under wraps,” said Coody. “They (Cheatwood) had to get an attorney to keep them from sending off the data from the onboard computer that records the weight of the lifts on each job. Have you seen or heard anything from the city about the accident? It’s been covered up. “
“They were more concerned with the possibility of a lawsuit than they were with Mark’s situation,” said Coody.
The Worker’s Compensation report can be accessed here.
Carson’s response to the FOIA about the onboard computer data says “The computer readings have not been recorded to a producible form and so cannot be produced at this time. “
From the information learned from the FOIA request: “Mr. Cheatwood remains an employee of the city of Fort Smith: his worker’s compensation claim has been accepted as compensable; and he currently is receiving temporary total disability benefits through the city’s worker’s compensation program,” according to Carson.
According to other information gleaned from the FOIA request, the boom truck involved in the accident has not been repaired and is in the possession of the city pending further investigation”.
The reply to the request denied access records that would “constitute evaluation /job performance records” with an extended paragraph of legalese contending the matter is still “under investigation”.
In the email attached to the reply to the request Carson wrote “The documents being produced will follow in several e-mails, so that the data transmitted does not become so large as to cause a transmission problem. I will clearly state which is the final e-mail.”
Carson later sent a color brochure that was a “load rating report” for the equipment in question showing line pull and weight restrictions, copies of the initial accident report, applicable records on the Workers Compensation filing, an annual crane inspection report dated “12-12-16” and an invoice from Anglen Diesel of Pocola for $6,925 for “emergency crane rental ” on the same day of the accident presumably to have the toppled crane put upright. Carson also furnished a machine delivery checklist, quarterly inspection reports, and a product data list manual on the equipment.
Coody says that incident, and another a few weeks later that involved what he called a physical assault” on an employee by a wastewater department employee by a supervisor that he reported to the human resource department “resulted in changes in the workplace environment that made it impossible for him to continue his employment with the city.”
“I worked for the city before I and I left and went to work in Mountainburg,” said Coody. “After I came back here I worked full time as a maintenance man for the wastewater department, but I have also been involved in police work. I have no reason to lie about any of this. I really feel I have been treated like a whistleblower.”
“I basically refused to go along with their version of the accident and how and why it happened,” said Coody. “And I feel like there was retaliation.”
Coody said several weeks after the crane incident he was called into a supervisors office and told “a pretty powerful city official” had observed him in a city vehicle “leaving a convenience store without buckling his seat belt”, a charge he denied then and now.
“They were looking for something, anything to get me canned,” said Coody.
Coody said there was also another incident where employees were working on a job site making an emergency repair when the supervisor onsite yelled “hit it with a hammer” about the piece of equipment they were working on at the time.
“One of the guys that hadn’t been on the job very long picked up a hammer and hit it,” said Coody. “The supervisor yelled ‘I didn’t tell YOU to hit it with a hammer” and started cussing the employee and eventually punched and pushed him in the chest.”
“I reported the incident to Naomi Roundtree (Fort Smith human resources director) and after that, everything changed on the job”, said Coody. “There is a clique in the wastewater department and if you’re not in it, you’re just not in it.”
Coody said that his job had always revolved around service and repair efforts at the city’s 23 pump stations but after the crane, seat belt and physical assault incidents he was relegated to staying at the P Street Treatment plant and that supervision was constantly “on his back” about everything and would “chew him out” for taking a breather on a job while others just stood around.
“I gave them my two weeks notice and by the second week, they had me cleaning toilets at the treatment plant,” said Coody. “It was degrading. Not because I’m too good to clean a toilet but because it was obvious they were delighted they had run me off.”
Coody said he and another employee, who had been there a much shorter time than he, both tendered their resignations at the same time. The junior, less experienced employee was called back in by supervision and offered a raise to stay while “they couldn’t show me he door fast enough”.
“I had been there all this time and was making $11.75 an hour and they called this other guy in and said they would give him a big raise if he would stay,” said Coody. “It’s insulting.”
Cautioned that he would probably be pegged as a “disgruntled former employee” by some for his revelations” Coody said those doing the pegging would be “100% correct”.
“I am disgruntled, but more about the way the crane incident with Mark was and is being handled thing anything else,” said Coody. “Do you think is an accident like that had happened on a local job site with a private contractor that the local news wouldn’t have been all over it? The whole thing has been swept under the rug since the beginning.”
“Here’s a good guy who gave years of service to the city who is probably down and out for he rest of his life—at least as far as his former employment goes-and all the city is concerned with is covering heir track and the bottom dollar”, said Coody. “Every citizen in the city should be ‘disgruntled’ at this point.”
Coody say he is in the process of seeking legal counsel and is exploring his options.
