Citations in Death at Dam to Be Appealed : Safety: Union officials complain that supervisors ignored warnings from workers and argue that Cal/OSHA’s action was too lenient.

Los Angeles County officials said Tuesday they would appeal state citations charging that the county had allowed unsafe working conditions at Pacoima Dam, where a worker fell 400 feet to his death, even as union officials were complaining that the state was too lenient.

A spokeswoman for the County Public Works Department said the department will appeal six safety citations issued last month by Cal/OSHA after the June 4 death of Mario Sanchez of San Fernando. She would not comment further.

Sanchez, 30, a father of two, died after a safety rope snapped as he dangled from a sheer mountain face clearing brush next to Pacoima Dam.

State investigators said they found that the hoist being used to lower Sanchez was not approved for raising and lowering workers, that safety ropes were improperly rigged and that other safety precautions had not been taken.

Cal/OSHA officials have said further citations are possible pending a review of training records. The state agency and the county district attorney’s office are also examining the case for potential criminal wrongdoing.

After meeting in Van Nuys Tuesday with Cal/OSHA and county officials, union representatives for county workers said that state investigators are ignoring fundamental safety questions raised by the accident. Alleging that county administrators knew unsafe conditions existed and did not correct them, they said the state should re-evaluate the decision to classify the violations as not being willful.

Cal/OSHA’s findings ignore the accounts of employees who say they warned supervisors numerous times before the accident that someone would be killed in a dam operation because inadequately trained workers were operating inappropriate hoisting equipment, according to the worker representatives.

“We believe there was clear and willful negligence on the part of the county,” said James Johnson, spokesman for Local 660 of the Service Employees International Union, which represents county flood control workers. “I believe there is criminal wrongdoing here. We were very hopeful that Cal/OSHA would take an aggressive position and they haven’t.”

Cal/OSHA spokesman Rick Rice said the agency has not turned up evidence that workers complained of dangerous conditions or of willful violations before the accident. But he said the investigation is not yet complete.

“It’s not over yet,” he said. “Any of those citations could be modified. There could be new citations.”

Johnson and Rees Lloyd, a lawyer for the Sanchez family, said Cal/OSHA has not explained how county officials could not have known that the hoist used in Sanchez’s death was not designed for use on human beings--only to raise and lower equipment--or that workers not trained as hoist operators were operating the equipment used to lower workers off hillsides.

They said Cal/OSHA investigators have not pursued leads from employees, such as veteran construction supervisor Rudy Rico, who says he told county safety officials a month before Sanchez’s death of his concern that someone would be killed because of a lack of training and qualified hoist operators.

County safety officials have declined comment.