Jose Luis Bautista Jr., 25, fell from a height of 40 to 50 feet when the beam he was working on tipped and threw him to the concrete floor on May 15. His mother, Lydia, and brother, Alan, allege negligence and gross negligence in a wrongful death lawsuit that was recently filed in Cameron County District Court. They are seeking a jury trial and more than $1 million in damages. The lawsuit said the 7,770-pound I beam Bautista was harnessed to had not been secured at its base “because the concrete was inadequate for holding the bolts, which allowed the I-beam to tip over.”The Donna resident was working for Delta Fabrication & Machine Inc., a SpaceX contractor helping construct the nearly 40-story-tall Gigabay that will be used to build and maintain Starship rockets. Cody Stewart, SpaceX’s project superintendent, told Cameron County sheriff investigators that the Daingerfield-based outfit was removing and replacing some of the beams. The 58-foot-long beam that fell was a new one awaiting installation. The Delta Fabrication workers had been unable to tighten bolts used to hold the beam in place “because the concrete floor of the facility was of poor quality,” the lawsuit said. They used “come-along” cables to temporarily secure the beam to another that was anchored since they were nearing the end of their shift. Come-alongs are hand-powered winches, often with a cable or chain, that workers tighten by ratcheting the handle. According to the lawsuit, a SpaceX official had told Delta Fabrication to redo the temporary rigging by using a “beam strap” along with a come-along instead of only the come-along and its cable. Beam straps are heavy-duty fabric straps that are looped around beams to provide connection points to attach equipment. Bautista was part of a team sent to adjust the setup. He was working on the beam from a scissor lift, according to the sheriff report. The beam fell as they adjusted the rigging. Delta Fabrication loosened one of the come-alongs, the other come-along failed, allowing the I-beam to tip over, and dragging Decedent to the ground,” the lawsuit said. According to the suit, SpaceX “dictated the means and method by which Delta Fabrication was to secure the I-beam, and SpaceX’s employee directed and oversaw” the work. Brent Harvey, Bautista’s senior superintendent, told a sheriff’s investigator he’d seen a photo of the beam and told his foreman, Omar Alvarado, to have a crew “properly adjust and secure the beam to the structure.” Harvey said he did not know why Bautista would have attached himself to the unsecured beam. Alvarado told investigators that Bautista “may have assumed the beam was secure due to the anchor bolts having already been installed.” Bautista was transported to a Brownsville hospital, where he was pronounced dead from “multiple blunt force trauma due to a fall,” according to Cameron County’s forensic pathologist. His was the first reported workplace fatality at Starbase and the second in the company’s history. #construction #job #family #safety - @bayouboyz7