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ELLABELL — For an excruciating 15 minutes, a Korean-speaking technician bled uncontrollably down his left thigh, caught on a treadmill that had ripped his hand off like a glove.
Medical paramedics described the horrific injuries sustained by the 40-year-old man at the structure of Hyundai’s latest electric vehicle conglomerate: a crushed chest, a deformed hand and a deformed leg. After an emergency airlift to Savannah Trauma Hospital, 30 miles away, they still didn’t know his name.
Three days later, on June 3, the site’s main company, Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America (HMGMA), issued a terse statement. One employee was treated for serious internal and external injuries and is in good condition. On June 5, the federal organization at fault for the Office Protection Office completed an on-site inspection, but more than two months later it has still not assigned liability.
Since construction began in January 2023, HMGMA and six other Hyundai-affiliated plants have cleared 3000 acres of land just south of I-16 ahead of schedule. Hyundai officials say their goal is to pull its first electric vehicle off the production line by the end of the year, in time for Hyundai cars built there to be eligible for customer incentives under the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act of 2024.
The immediate speed of construction, however, comes at a cost to Georgia’s largest economic progress project, according to a former and current security official.
The two men, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals from Hyundai, have worked on other primary structure projects in the region. At the huge Ellabell center, the protection criteria are among the worst they have experienced in their careers.
The organizational chaos forces, according to the former director, to stick to more productive protection practices and raises questions about whether the dozens of companies affected by their structure respect office protection laws.
The treadmill accident, the main points of which are first reported, is one of at least 20 traumatic injuries that the painters’ emergency corps has responded to at Hyundai’s site since the paintings began in January 2023 through May 2024, according to EmergencyArrayand Firefighters. records received through The Current.
Thirteen of those injuries occurred in the first six months of 2024. Among them, two other people were injured in falls, two were hit in the head with devices, and four were involved in car accidents. Many required emergency airlift off-site. of them resulted in the death of a worker.
These serious injuries make up only a fraction of the total 911 calls from the site, according to documents reviewed through The Current, and exclude incidents such as those in which staff suffered heat exhaustion, stress-related injuries and non-injury car accidents.
However, at the same time, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) only lists 10 reports in its public database related to injuries that occurred between January 2023 and May 2024.
Under federal law, employers must report serious injuries or injuries to OSHA as soon as possible, and the company initiates a compliance inspection after receiving a report. It’s unclear what the discrepancy between documented injuries and OSHA inspections is due to.
The federal agency’s workplace in Savannah did not respond to several phone calls commenting on protection standards, its oversight of dozens of Hyundai contractors and suppliers working at the production site and the number of injuries reported at the site.
OSHA’s database does not include any inspections for any of Hyundai’s seven on-site corporations, which are legally separate from others but will work together to produce Hyundai’s electric vehicles.
One of those companies, HMGMA, is known colloquially as “Metaplant” and is an entity recently formed under contract with Georgia to obtain $2. 1 billion in tax deferrals, subsidized structural costs and other benefits. In exchange, it has committed to creating 8,500 jobs. in collaboration with the other Hyundai subsidiaries offer on the site.
But most of the staff who build the site’s amenities are hired through a complex network of subcontractors and suppliers, a common business style that reduces the liability of a giant company.
OSHA has imposed fines for office protection violations on two of these contractors who work at HMGMA’s facility at the Ellabell site. Louisiana-based Eastern Constructors Incorporated ordered more than $160,000 to be paid, while Sungwon Georgia Corp. She was fined $22,000. Both corporations are challenging the fines.
The only employee who died in the Array was working for Eastern Constructors, and the company no longer has a contract at theArray, according to HMGMA.
HMGMA told The Current in a statement that the company and its subsidiaries “adhere to strict safety criteria throughout the site. ”
HMGMA did not respond to a question about whether it tracks employee injuries sitewide.
All seven Hyundai plants are independently at fault for reporting injuries to structural personnel at their facilities to OSHA, HMGMA spokeswoman Bianca Johnson wrote. “HMGMA encourages them to report in a timely manner, as needed,” he said. The Current contacted all seven corporations and gained a backlash from HMGMA.
“There is popular on-site guidance for all who enter the site, covering critical protective regulations for structural PPE, strategies for reporting twists of fate, and the availability of an on-site medical clinic,” Johnson wrote. Also a weekly protective team meeting with all members to report injury rates, problems found/solved, and more productive practices. HMGMA also has an on-site emergency reaction team trained in medical, fire and spill reaction.
The former protection manager who worked in the organization’s HMGMA component told The Current that there were several days when the manager saw personnel without critical protective devices, such as helmets. protection or appropriate footwear. The security briefing, the official said, lasted only a few minutes.
The speed of the cadres created “an atmosphere of frustration,” according to the former manager.
“All the time I ask myself, ‘What have I gotten myself into?'” the former security officer said. “Chaotic would be an understatement. “
The details of almost all of the traumatic incidents that occurred there have never been made public. The following are descriptions of several incidents documented through first responders and firefighters, and told to The Current through eyewitness employees.
In the first reported injury and death shown at the structure site, structure employee Victor Javier Gamboa lost his balance while standing on a metal beam on the third floor of the unfinished paint shop at HMGMA on 29 April 2023.
Gamboa, a contractor hired through Eastern Constructors, took the work to his five children and fiancée in Statesboro.
When assistance arrived, he was lying on his back, unconscious and unconscious, his seat belt unfastened around his waist. It carried a safety lanyard, a long lanyard designed to catch the wearer in the event of a fall. But as he fell, a metal beam cut the cable, leaving Gamboa falling 20 meters to the ground. Workers who saw the twist of fate told EMS that Gamboa hit a lower beam when he fell.
Emergency doctors tried to classify him, but they couldn’t save him. Gamboa was pronounced dead and care of his body was turned over to the Bryan County coroner an hour and 42 minutes after paramedics arrived on the scene.
OSHA investigated Eastern Constructors, and the company found that the company committed a serious and willful violation of the hard work law. This ruling represents the ultimate serious violation OSHA can impose, announcing that the employer intentionally ignored OSHA’s protective rules and regulations and failed to protect the worker. employee.
OSHA fined Eastern Constructors more than $160,000 after finding that the failed lifebuoy could not deal with sharp edges as designed. According to OSHA, Eastern Constructors failed to comply with required protective protocols, such as examining life-saving devices before each use and allowing Gamboa to wear a protective harness that was defective and had “indicators of significant damage and deterioration. ”
The firm also added the contractor to its Serious Offender Program, a list of employers who demonstrate repeated disregard for their legal responsibility to provide a healthy office for their employees.
In November, Eastern Constructors challenged the fine. The OSHA case remains open and investigation documents will not be made public until the case is closed.
Following OSHA’s decision, HMGMA announced that it would end its collaboration with Eastern Constructors. HMGMA reported on August 8 that the company had been removed from the site.
Rescue personnel airlifted another injured employee from the structure site on Feb. 16, 2024, after he fell 15 to 20 feet from a platform, according to emergency medical reports.
But first, doctors had to tend to the injured employee at the 3,000-acre site.
When emergency services arrived at the main security building, there was no one there to escort the patient through the large site. No one in the security office was aware of the incident, firefighters present at the scene wrote in their report.
The crew was halfway through the construction of the main meeting when a white Dodge Ram beckoned them over and showed them the warehouse where the injured employee was located. Even so, the firefighters said that “it was evident that the user who was driving us did not know where the patient Array was”.
Finally, after the “disturbing” sounds, doctors discovered the employee lying on his back in a “state of stupor”, close to unconsciousness, according to the emergency medical report. He was surrounded by between 20 and 30 employees of the structure, blood flowing from the back of his neck and from his left ear.
During the worker’s evaluation, EMS discovered no symptoms of a protective harness.
According to the emergency medical report, the warehouse where the doctors found the injured man was too narrow for the ambulance and its team to provide him with maximum effective care.
While the doctors were working, the hospital staff approached the first responders.
As EMS pinned and restrained the injured man to the dashboard and stretcher, those workers surrounded him, yelling at them to hurry up and looking to touch the patient as the EMS team attempted to “complete appropriate life-sustaining treatment. “
Once in the ambulance, EMS reported that “several staff members were taken to the ambulance and had to be asked to leave several times. “EMS allowed a “friend/colleague” to ride in the ambulance to translate for the patient.
“All of the things mentioned above have resulted in a delay in contact and care for patients,” the EMS agent wrote.
The injured employee was transported to a LifeStar emergency helicopter and transported to Memorial University Health Medical Center in Savannah.
Emergency and fire reports reviewed through The Current removed the injured worker’s call for privacy reasons. The documents do not imply where he worked. None of the Hyundai subsidiaries working on the structure have publicly shown the damage.
OSHA records show the company opened an inspection into an incident involving a fall at an HMGMA assembly construction site on Feb. 21. However, as the OSHA case is still open, it is unclear if this OSHA case is a reaction to the February 16 case. Incident detailed through reports EMS. La only time before Feb. 21 that first responders provided care following a fall at the Hyundai site in September 2023.
In the Feb. 21 case, OSHA found that contractor Sungwon Georgia Corp. had committed two serious violations and fined the company $22,000 for exposing itself to a 15-foot fall hazard without an anchored fall arrest system.
Sungwon is doing well looking good and the case is still open. The Current tried to reach Sungwon, but the company did not respond.
HMGMA did not respond to a message from The Current about whether it is still under contract with Sungwon Georgia Corp.
Two other personnel fell and were injured on Sept. 23, 2023, and March 21, 2024, according to EMS records. First responders found one man lying face down after falling from a crane, and the other had an “obviously” damaged arm after being thrown from a basket 30 feet high. Emergency medical services took the injured personnel to Memorial Hospital for treatment.
No incident dates appear in OSHA inspection data, and OSHA does not report any on-site inspections within a month after the damage. It is unclear which subcontractor hired those men.
Five additional traumatic injuries occurred in cases recorded during emergencies and fires in which personnel were struck by heavy objects. In October 2023, for example, a metal beam cut deep into an employee’s shin. In another incident, in December 2023, a metal beam fell on an employee and mutilated his leg.
In January, an employee hit himself between his eyes with a steel pipe while running in an elevator basket. When assistance arrived, his limbs were numb and immobile after falling backwards into the basket.
In December 2023, one worker’s leg was crushed by a forklift, and in February 2024, another’s foot was crushed by a scissor lift.
The identities of those personnel were redacted from emergency medical and fireplace branch records reviewed through The Current. OSHA’s inspection database shows no records of on-site inspections in the week following those accidents.
By the end of May, structural paints at Hyundai GLOVIS, the site’s logistics provider, had advanced enough to install and test a conveyor belt.
A 40-year-old Korean-speaking employee hired through SFA Engineering Corp. , a South Korean manufacturer of advertising equipment, is a component of the team blamed for wearing down the work.
On May 31, while the technician was working, the machinery suddenly started up. We still don’t know how or why. OSHA has not made any public statement about the incident.
Word immediately spread at the facility that a man was trapped in the machinery’s gnashing jaws.
Upon rushing to the scene, a manager called 911 requesting emergency medical help.
First aid arrived 15 minutes later. They reported that the technician was lying on his left side, trapped between two parts of the machine, and that he lost consciousness on several occasions.
The guy was bleeding uncontrollably from his left thigh, where the device had ripped the flesh from his bones. His right hand was “deformed” and his skin was torn, exposing the bones, tendons and muscles beneath him.
“What’s his name?” How old is he?'” one emergency medical worker yelled. He later wrote in his report that he did not perceive the staff who had surrounded the victim, as most spoke in Korean.
First responders placed two tall, tight tourniquets on his leg and arm, slowing the bleeding long enough for a Bryan County fire crew to extract his body from the machine.
The man’s chest was crushed and in all likelihood he suffered a collapsed lung, the EMS team told the 911 operator. Paramedics plunged a decompression needle into the technician’s chest, listening to see if air escaped through the catheter.
After 37 minutes of on-site triage, a LifeStar helicopter arrived and transported him to Memorial Hospital, the nearest Level 1 trauma center.
There, the hospital admitted him with a trauma name, a jumble of phonetic letters randomly selected to differentiate him from the other John Does in the Memorial Hospital emergency room.
The airlift passed without authorization, but neither Hyundai Metaplant nor Hyundai GLOVIS disclosed the main points of the accident.
On June 3, HMGMA released a guy from Array One who was treated for serious internal and external injuries and is in good condition, it said.
The cause of the injury, he added, is still being investigated.
OSHA’s public documentation of the May 31 accident is scarce. OSHA classified the treadmill injury as an “amputation. “The agency’s Savannah finished the on-site inspection portion on June 5.
HMGMA and Hyundai GLOVIS cooperated together on OSHA’s investigation, the company told The Current. The GLOVIS factory halted work as soon as the incident was reported, the company said.
However, two months later, OSHA imposed violations or fines on the subcontractor. HMGMA showed The Current that the technician is still receiving medical attention.
Although HMGMA cut ties with Eastern Constructors Incorporated after Gamboa’s death, the company declined to say whether other subcontractors involved in traumatic injuries to its employees were evicted or reprimanded in any way.
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