Resources for Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)

30 years after disaster, OSHA staff smaller

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Two months after 51 construction workers plunged to their deaths at Willow Island, then-Assistant Labor Secretary Eula Bingham explained why her agency couldn't have inspected the construction site more frequently.
At the time, 17 Occupational Safety and Health Administration officers were charged with overseeing 31,000 workplaces across West Virginia.

Then-Gov. Jay Rockefeller (center) tours the wreckage with inspectors after the deaths of 51 workers in the collapse of scaffolding at the Pleasants Power Station at Willow Island in April 1978.
"Our area offices are constantly making very difficult choices in using inspection resources to respond to the most serious workplace problems," Bingham told a June 1978 congressional hearing held just up the river from Willow Island at St. Marys. "Even if this agency were to double or triple its compliance resources, we could never regularly visit the five million workplaces throughout the nation."

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