(The following story by Robin Turner of the Western Mail appeared at ICWales.co.uk on August 11.)
WALES — A steelworker was found crushed to death at Port Talbot’s giant Corus plant where there had been “constant, intermittent faults” with safety equipment, an inquest heard yesterday .
But the jury at the Neath inquest was directed to return a verdict of accidental death yesterdayon locomotive driver Bryan Robbins, 53.
The widower, of Duke Street, just a few yards from the Margam plant, had worked there since leaving school and was known as “very safety conscious”.
In May last year, he was involved in moving hot metal contained in wagons using remote-controlled locomotives operated from a hand-held control box.
At around 8.15pm on May 7, Mr Robbins was found collapsed. Despite attempts to revive him by colleagues, who thought he had suffered a heart attack, he was declared dead at the scene.
No one saw what happened to Mr Robbins, a father-of-two and a grandfather.
A post-mortem examination found that he had suffered severe crush injuries to the pelvis.
Steve Curry, of the Health and Safety Executive, said he thought that Mr Robbins had been crushed between the side of the locomotive and a solid steel door leading into a loading bay.
The inquest was told that locomotive operators were instructed never to stand between the train and the door as there was a gap of just six inches.
Neath Port Talbot Coroner Dr David Osborne, summing up for the jury, said there would have been no inherent dangers if procedures had been followed.
The inquest was told by fellow loco operator Stephen Meyrick, of Baglan, that the control box was equipped with safety features that should have alerted others when Mr Robbins was injured. But he told the hearing that they had experienced “constant intermittent faults” with signals coming from the radio-controlled system.
Mr Meyrick said that since the accident locomotives were now operated by two men rather than one. The box had a tilt mechanism which should have sounded a warning klaxon and stopped the train if the box reached a 45 degree angle.
It was designed to work in situations where operators fell over or collapsed.
The inquest heard yesterday however Mr Robbins may have switched the box off in an attempt to stop the train, something which would have deactivated the alarm.
Pathologist Dr Alan Dawson said Mr Robbins died of multiple injuries.
David Michael Williams, of Baglan, Port Talbot, a member of the works rescue team who tried to revive Mr Robbins, said, “He was quite cold and of a grey colour.
“There were no obvious signs of injury, no blood about the person, no obvious risks to his clothes. We thought it was a heart attack.”
There have been five deaths in the Margam steel plant in the past five years.
Kevin Downey died last year from severe burns after falling into molten waste.
It followed a triple fatal accident at Corus in November 2001, when Stephen Galsworthy, 25, Andrew Hutin, 20, and 53-year-old Len Radford died after an explosion at blast furnace number 5.
Mr Downey had tried to save the victims of the 2001 blast.
After yesterday’s inquest, a Corus spokesman said the works was a community business which took its safety responsibilities very seriously.
Mr Robbins’s family issued a statement, part of which read:
“The crush point which caused his death had been identified as a risk, yet the accident still occurred.
“The last hope of Bryan’s family is that Corus takes every opportunity to prevent such an accident happening again.”