Cell Tower Deaths
May 22, 2012
30m
FRONTLINE and ProPublica investigate the hidden cost that comes with the demand for better and faster cell phone service
May 22, 2012
30m
Share
The smartphone revolution comes with a hidden cost. A joint investigation by FRONTLINE and ProPublica explores the hazardous work of independent contractors who are building and servicing Americaâs expanding cellular infrastructure. While some tower climbers say they are under pressure to cut corners, layers of subcontracting make it difficult for safety inspectors to determine fault when a tower worker is killed or injured.
Support provided by:
Learn More
The FRONTLINE Newsletter
CORRESPONDENT Martin Smith
MARTIN SMITH, Correspondent: [voice-over] Itâs one of Americaâs most dangerous jobs.
TOWER CLIMBER: People have no idea what we go do on a day-to-day basis to give them that service when theyâre holding their cell phones.
[Twitter #frontline]
MARTIN SMITH: Tower climbers install and service cell phone antennas, ascending hundreds, sometimes more than a thousand feet.
ROBERT HALE, Former Tower Climber: People donât understand what the danger is to tower climbing. One person drops a wrench and itâll kill somebody.
TOWER CLIMBER: Yeah, 1,500 feet! Look at that view! We get paid for this!
MARTIN SMITH: The job attracts a certain kind of workerâ
TOWER CLIMBER: This is awesome!
NARRATOR: âsomeone like Jay Guilford.
ROBERT HALE: He was young. He was cocky. He was never scared of nothing.
911 OPERATOR: 911 emergency.
TOWER WORKER: Yes, weâre working on a tower site. We just had a man fall from a 200-foot tower. We need an ambulance.
911 OPERATOR: OK, Iâll get them down there.
ROBERT HALE: It was not even a year. Jay ainât even been in it a year when the accident happened.
MARTIN SMITH: Guilfordâs death wasnât an isolated case. Over the last decade, other men have been falling to their deathsâ North Carolina, Arizona, Kentucky, Florida, Iowa. Since 2003, there have been nearly 100 climbers killed on radio, TV and cell towers, a rate that is about 10 times the average for construction workers.
INTERVIEWEE: Jay Guilford, actuallyâ this is what he was using when heâ
MARTIN SMITH: To find out why, reporters at FRONTLINE and ProPublica investigated the 50 cell-related deaths.
INTERVIEWER: But did they address the question of responsibility forâ
MARTIN SMITH: After poring over thousands of documents, we discovered a complex web of subcontracting that has allowed the major carriers to avoid scrutiny when accidents happen.
[www.pbs.org: How we reported the story]
RAY HULL, Former Tower Climber: Any of your cell phone carriers, as far as theyâre concerned, safety is our issue, not theirs.
MARTIN SMITH: Ray Hull is a tower climbing veteran. Before cell phones, he worked mostly on TV and radio towers.
RAY HULL: Any major tower company knew who I was, knew who my dad was, my granddad. Iâm third generation in that line of work.
MARTIN SMITH: But with the boom in cell phones, the industry suddenly changed.
RAY HULL: There was a big push for these cell companies to start expanding out and covering the dead areas, everybody trying to outdo everybody.
WINTON WILCOX, Tower Industry Veteran: Fifteen, twenty years ago, a good tower company mightâ might build four towers a year. Now timelines are radically different. So instead of contracts to build a tower, you have contracts to build 40 towers.
MARTIN SMITH: The increased pressure almost killed Hull.
RAY HULL: It was a cell phone tower for Nextel.
MARTIN SMITH: Hull was hired by the subcontractor and given a strict deadline.
RAY HULL: The only problem with that is, the equipment that I had to use was in Texas, and weâre in Fremont, Nebraska, about 20 hours away.
MARTIN SMITH: He was worried the drive would make him miss the deadline, so Hull called the subcontractor.
RAY HULL: They said, âWe canât change the deadline. This is Nextelâs deadline. Theyâ the tower has to be up and completed.â We left Nebraska, and it was nonstop. We drove straight through, loaded the equipment, got back in the truck, and drove nonstop.
MARTIN SMITH: He planned to sleep back in Nebraska, but then he arrived at the work site.
RAY HULL: When we got back, there was a Nextel vehicle on site. I assumed that he was there to rattle our cage, get us to go faster.
MARTIN SMITH: Hull didnât know it was just a technician. He felt pressured and immediately ascended the tower. We obtained the government investigation video and showed it to Hull for the first time.
RAY HULL: Iâm just amazed that Iâm even here. I remember hearing a loud noise.
MARTIN SMITH: A huge piece of steel broke lose.
RAY HULL: My head was jammed into the piece of steel and knocked me out.
MARTIN SMITH: Hull fell 240 feet, but his life was spared after his safety harness broke the fall.
RAY HULL: The operator pulled the wrong lever. Frankie was with me on the trip from Nebraska to Texas and back. Neither one of us was rested. And we have the end result that we do today.
MARTIN SMITH: Hull suffered severe internal injuries and is now permanently disabled.
RAY HULL: It was a bad day, or a good day, whichever way you want to look at it. I walked away from it.
MARTIN SMITH: [on camera] So a lot of time pressureâ you saw that often in your in your work?
WALLY REARDON, Former Tower Climber: All the time.
MARTIN SMITH: All the time.
WALLY REARDON: We saw it all the time.
MARTIN SMITH: [voice-over] Veteran climbers like Wally Reardon say that time pressure often leads to something called âfree climbing.â
WALLY REARDON: Free climbingâs anytime when a personâs climbing on a tower where youâre not connected to a fall arrest system.
MARTIN SMITH: [on camera] A catch. Basically, youâre attached to the tower.
WALLY REARDON: Right.
Heâs just thinking about the shortest route there.
MARTIN SMITH: Reardon climbed towers for 10 years. Now he drives around and takes pictures of free climbing to try to draw attention to the dangerous practice, which regulations strictly prohibit.
WALLY REARDON: Heâs not tied off.
MARTIN SMITH: Free climbing was involved in about half of the fatalities we examined.
[on camera] So what am I looking at here, Wally?
WALLY REARDON: Weâre looking at the guy coming down. Heâs disconnected right now, and as you can see, his fall arrestâ
MARTIN SMITH: So heâs totally free climbing?
WALLY REARDON: Heâs totallyâ see how fast heâs coming down?
MARTIN SMITH: Yeah. So he trips, misses one step, heâs a dead man.
WALLY REARDON: Yeah, heâsâ yeah. Absolutely. Thatâs pretty much the way we did it, standard operating procedure.
MARTIN SMITH: So this was no secret that everybody was free climbing and that you could get your work done quickerâ
WALLY REARDON: Right.
MARTIN SMITH: âand that the contractor that was your employer was happy to have it that way.
WALLY REARDON: Sure. And even the safest people Iâve worked with in the industry eventually will cave to it.
MARTIN SMITH: [voice-over] Free climbing was apparently common for the crew that Michael Sulfridge worked with. He was a high school dropout still living at home in rural Tennessee.
ROSA SULFRIDGE, Michael Sulfridgeâs Mother: He wanted to be a cop, but I talked him out of that because I thought that was a dangerous job. I was afraid heâd got shot or something.
MARTIN SMITH: When he got a job tower climbing, his parents werenât happy about that, either.
ROSA SULFRIDGE: And we tried to make him quit, but he wouldnât. âIâll be OK, Mom.â He had big smile on his face, you know? âDonât worry, Mom. Iâll be OK.â
MARTIN SMITH: His motherâs fears came true. He was free climbing near the top of this tower in Kentucky and lost his balance.
RANDY GRAY, Former OSHA Investigator: Whenever he lost his balance and fell from the tower, he landed somewhere in this area here on the ground. And in this spiral wire above was one of his tennis shoes and a workbelt.
MARTIN SMITH: Randy Gray was the investigator for OSHA, the government agency that regulates workplace safety.
RANDY GRAY: Sometimes I still canât imagine what that boy was thinking whenever he fell off that tower, that very last few seconds.
MARTIN SMITH: Gray quickly discovered that free climbing was so accepted that the crew didnât even bother to take safety lanyards with them up on the tower.
RANDY GRAY: The lanyards were all in the back of the supervisorâs truck. Some of them were even in new packaging, never opened up. And the employees all confirmed thatâs just the way they normally did things.
MARTIN SMITH: Tower Services Incorporated, Sulfridgeâs employer, declined our interview requests. Gray issued the company citations that carried a fine of $143,000. Eventually, it settled with OSHA for $24,000.
We wanted to ask OSHA about additional responsibility beyond the contractor.
[on camera] If the carrier is controlling the schedule, putting pressure on the general contractor, who in turn puts pressure on the subcontractor, whoâ
JORDAN BARAB, Department of Labor, OSHA: Weâve had a number of situations where we think that accidents were caused by companies trying to meet deadlines and notâ notâ and cutting corners on safety in order to meet those deadlines.
MARTIN SMITH: [voice-over] Jordan Barab is the number two at OSHA. Although OSHA routinely fines subcontractors after accidents, itâs more difficult to go after the carriers who hire them. To do so, it must first prove the carrier is controlling the work and has knowledge of the violation.
JORDAN BARAB: Our problem in this industry is that you have these little contractors that may set off in their pickup truck, you know, driving miles across the countryside, and may never have any contact, face-to-face contact, with their contractors.
MARTIN SMITH: [on camera] But the work that theyâre doing is controlled, in a very real sense, by the carrier at the top of the chain.
JORDAN BARAB: Itâs very restrictive in terms of the legal requirements. Generally, itâs only useful when you actually have somebody at the site that actually is witnessing and has some control over the actual working conditions at the site.
RANDY GRAY, Former OSHA Investigator: You can see the tower over here to the left.
MARTIN SMITH: [voice-over] Randy Gray concluded that Bluegrass Cellular, the carrier in the Sulfridge case, regularly visited the companyâs tower sites, so he issued citations.
RANDY GRAY: It just seems logical that whenever the carrier was here, that they had the possibility to know that these people were not tying off with personal protective equipment, just like anyone else wouldâve.
MARTIN SMITH: But Bluegrass fought back, saying, âBluegrass does not have a duty to oversee the safety of independent contractor employees working at its cellular sites.â Gray couldnât show that Bluegrass, which also declined our interview request, was on site and watching the day Sulfridge fell.
RANDY GRAY: There was no way to prove that the carrier knew that they were up there, not tied off, and thereâs no way to proveâ to know that the carrier had been on the job site that day or the day before.
MARTIN SMITH: After a nearly three-year legal battle, Bluegrass won and all OSHA citations were dropped.
We discovered that the Bluegrass case was the only time since 2003 that OSHA even attempted to cite a carrier after the death of a subcontractor.
[on camera] What does this say to you, that thereâve been no citations by OSHA against any carriers?
JORDAN BARAB: It says to me that we donât have the legal ability to do that. Legally, thereâs no way we can really get to that company, the company that mayâ again, several levels upâ that may actually own the tower.
RANDY GRAY: It is difficult because theyâve got that layer.
MARTIN SMITH: So the multi-layers protect them from liability?
RANDY GRAY: Yeah. Just through their own policy, they layer themselves away from it.
MARTIN SMITH: It protects them from getting an OSHA citation.
RANDY GRAY: Yes.
[www.pbs.org: What OSHA can and canât do]
MARTIN SMITH: [voice-over] In the middle of the last decade, the major carriers were gearing up for the next generation of cell phones. This push was all about data, a new standard called 3G.
AT&T had merged with Cingular to form the largest cell company at the time.
ED REYNOLDS, Fmr. President, Network Services, AT&T: We had this huge slug of work that was occurring in â05 and â06.
MARTIN SMITH: Ed Reynolds is the former president of network services at AT&T. Before retiring in 2007, he was charged with combining two distinct networks into one.
ED REYNOLDS: It would be like taking a 747 with all of its engines, and while itâs in flight at 35,000 feet, youâre going to change all four engines into one huge engine and not lose a foot of altitude.
MARTIN SMITH: But that was only the beginning.
ED REYNOLDS: And then the iPhone hit, and we knew that it was going to be a success. We were confident it would be a success. But it was a game changer, if you will.
NEWSCASTER: Well, as you can see, weâre on 5th Avenue in front of the big Apple storeâ
MARTIN SMITH: The success meant that data usage far exceeded what AT&T had predicted.
NEWSCASTER: Here is the giant throngâ
MARTIN SMITH: Its network wasnât ready.
BOB EGAN, Cell Network Analyst: AT&T knew that it was in trouble and that it had to get very aggressive on expanding their network footprint, especially around capacity.
MARTIN SMITH: By 2008, AT&T was pouring billions of dollars into tower upgrades. And for Phoenix of Tennessee, an AT&T subcontractor, that meant one thing.
KYLE WAITES, Owner, Phoenix of Tennessee: Work. Lots of work.
MARTIN SMITH: But to get that work, Phoenix had to go through a middleman.
KYLE WAITES: We donât deal direct with AT&T. We do work for the vendors, the turf vendors.
MARTIN SMITH: âTurf vendorsâ are large firms, like General Dynamics or Bechtel, that AT&T relies on to manage work on thousands of tower sites across the country. The turf vendors, in turn, subcontract to companies like Phoenix. And in 2008, Phoenix also sent much of its work to a smaller affiliate, a company called All Around Towers.
KYLE WAITES: I would make the phone calls, open the door. Once I got them in, they pretty much took it from there.
ROBERT HALE, Former Climber, All Around Towers: And then All Around Towers hired their own crew members, their own people. It didnât matter if they had experience or not.
MARTIN SMITH: Like Jay Guilford. He kicked around between part-time jobs. He was a mover. He delivered pizzas. But after his second child was born, he needed something better. All Around Towers was offering a full-time job at $10 an hour.
BRIDGET PIERCE, Jay Guilfordâs Fiancee: Thatâs when he filled out the application, came back out, said he had a job, and they gave him a $600 check and had a plane ticket for him to leave, like, the next day.
MARTIN SMITH: Guilford, with no prior experience, was suddenly thrown into one of the biggest building projects the tower industry had ever seen.
BRIDGET PIERCE: Even in the wintertime, there was ice on the towers. And he would tell me he would have to literally beat ice off of the pegs to climb up the towers, which I did not find that very safe.
MARTIN SMITH: But his cousin and co-worker says Guilford wasnât scared.
ROBERT: He enjoyed it. I mean, it wasâ it give him a rush that was unreal. Jay, I mean, he justâ he loved the job.
MARTIN SMITH: It was May 2008 in a rural corner of Indiana.
WORKER: We just had a man fall from a 200-foot tower. We need an ambulance.
911 OPERATOR: Iâve got units en route down there.
BRIDGET PIERCE: Jayâs dad called me, and thatâs when he told me that he had fallen off the tower. I freaked out and screamed andâ just screamed and screamed.
MARTIN SMITH: Guilford fell when he was rappelling down the tower using the wrong kind of rope without a safety line. One witness said he was horsing around, his co-workers on the ground cheering him on. His rope was attached to a broken hook that popped off the tower. And it turns out, an autopsy showed that he had recently smoked marijuana.
KYLE WAITES: Do I feel responsible to a degree? I think everybody does that was involved with it. I think all of theâ I think the turf vendor does and I think everybody does anytime somebody dies. I was not the guy who put the man in, the crew leader in charge.
MARTIN SMITH: Waites puts most of the blame on Guilford for breaking safety rules and on All Around Towers for the broken equipment and lack of supervision.
KYLE WAITES: Once you leave men alone, the men have to police themselves. The man in charge has to be the sergeant. We canât hold the hands of everybody 100 percent of the time. Itâs impossible.
ROBERT HALE: If that equipment is checked when it comes off that truck or trailer, it should have never happened. When youâre allowed to do something that is strictly unsafe, then somethingâs wrong up the line somewhere.
MARTIN SMITH: OSHA cited Phoenix of Tennessee, the parent company of All Around Towers, for the broken equipment. The fine was $2,500. The case was closed.
But OSHA missed the bigger picture. Our investigation found that 11 climbers working on AT&T projects died as the company built out its network between 2006 and 2008. Thatâs more than all the other major carriers combined.
AT&T took notice.
KYLE WAITES: AT&T made everybody have a stand-down, discuss the deaths, why it happened, what will happen to you if you get caught free climbing. They required that of every single turf vendor nationwide. It didnât matter who you were, where you were at. You had a stand-down.
MARTIN SMITH: [on camera] So they said, âLetâs have a stand-down. Letâs stop work and figure out what the truth is.â What did they figure out?
CRAIG LEKUTIS, Publisher, WirelessEstimator.com: I donât know if they figured out anything, quite frankly.
MARTIN SMITH: [voice-over] Craig Lekutis is an industry watchdog and safety advocate.
CRAIG LEKUTIS: I think what they did, it was, âHey, weâve got to pay more attention to safetyâ because most of those accidents, I believe, during that period of time were accidents that were caused by the worker not tying off 100 percent.
MARTIN SMITH: [on camera] It sounds like a pretty flimsy resolution.
CRAIG LEKUTIS: It is. It didnât have the impact of if carriers would have said, âHey, weâre stopping all work. Weâre going to figure out and weâre going to solve this problem.â I think a lot of times, itâs more lip service than it is a real desire to be concerned about the safety of this industry.
MARTIN SMITH: [voice-over] AT&T declined our request for an interview. In a statement, the company wrote that its contracts ârequire strict compliance with state and federal laws and regulations, including worker safetyâ and that âworker safety has always been a hallmark of AT&T.â
[www.pbs.org: Read the statement]
Guilfordâs fiancee, Bridget Pierce, thinks that no one ultimately took responsibility for Guilfordâs safety.
BRIDGET PIERCE: I believe that everybody that is involved should be held accountableâ AT&T, the contractors, General Dynamics, and the smaller companies that are subcontracted out. Everybody in this process should be held accountable for and have to pay fines and have regulations that they all have to live up to.
MARTIN SMITH: After Guilford died, the foreman for All Around Towers disappeared and was never questioned by OSHA. The company quickly went out of business, but two of its owners, who declined interview requests, then started another company that continues to do work in the industry. That doesnât surprise those who study subcontracting.
DAVID WEIL, Economics Prof., Boston University: The problem of focusing the enforcement attention at the bottom, at the small subcontractor, is a little bit like the old game of Whac-a-Mole. You can enforce your OSHA standards on that individual contractor and hit the mole, but there are a lot of other contractors that are going to pop up.
If we want to improve conditions in a workplace like towers, we have to think about the system that generates fatalities.
MARTIN SMITH: In the tower industry, that system is increasingly built around the turf vendor. AT&T relies on them almost exclusively. Sprint is also starting to.
ED REYNOLDS, Fmr. President, Network Services, AT&T: Turfing does save time and money. In the wireless business, particularly when something like an iPhone that drives data usage out the roof, you need to respond quickly. The more of that administrative stuff you can have out of the way and go right to work on doing what you need to do, adding capacity to the network, reconfiguring the network, turfingâs a benefit.
MARK HEIN, Construction Manager: Itâs good sense for theâ for the carrier to do it. And itâs good for the turf vendor because theyâre making a lot of profit off the project. But itâs not good for the person downâ when it gets to the field, where the work has got to be done.
MARTIN SMITH: Mark Hein has worked for several turf vendors. He says the additional layer of subcontracting means those at the bottom are forced to accept less money.
MARK HEIN: Thereâs a lot of good companies that wonât work for them because the moneyâs not there. So rather than paying this amount to this guy, whoâs really qualified and been in the business, gotâ has a great reputation, they hire this person over here because heâs available right now and heâll do it for what we want him to do it for.
MARTIN SMITH: After starting a new job last year, he was shocked by the subpar crews he found on his first round of inspections.
MARK HEIN: When I went out as construction manager, I shut down every project I had working. They didnât have COMTRAIN training. They didnât have RF training. They didnât have their hardhats. They didnât have safety glasses. They didnât have safety gear.
MARTIN SMITH: Most surprising to Hein, many of these crews werenât even hired or approved by the turf vendor.
MARK HEIN: They were working for a sub of a turf vendorâ you know, a couple subs down the line.
MARTIN SMITH: But because of the way OSHA regulates the industry, turf vendors, like carriers, are rarely held responsible after accidents.
MARK HEIN: I wouldnât say that the turf vendor doesnât know. I think the turf vendor just turns a blind eye to it because his contract is with subcontractor B. Itâs his responsibility.
WINTON WILCOX, Tower Industry Veteran: By the time we get to the actual person with a tool in their hand, we have significantly reduced the financial benefits. And we have put three or four layers of communication problems into the intended final results.
MARTIN SMITH: Chris Deckrow owns a small climbing company in Michigan that typically works at the bottom of a chain of contractors.
CHRIS DECKROW, High Elevation Rescue and Maintenance, LLC: The good companies are going out of business because they canât afford their safety. They canât afford their insurance. They canât afford their workmenâs comp.
MARTIN SMITH: Deckrow showed us whatâs left over for him after each contractor, especially the turf vendor, takes a big cut.
CHRIS DECKROW: AT&T pays the turfer $187 to install a remote radio head. The turfer then takes the contractor and pays them $93. Iâve seen as low as $40 to $50 and been paid $40 to $50 dollars to install that same item.
MARTIN SMITH: Deckrow says the pricing has forced him to make hard decisions. He drives his trucks more than 100,000 miles a year without changing the tires. And heâs cut his safety budget.
CHRIS DECKROW: This day and age, everybodyâs faced with the money versus safety. Whether theyâll admit it or not, everybodyâs had to cut back on something. We would love to replace every year, every two years, new harnesses and new safety gear for all our guys. Itâs not in the budget. But this is stuff they have to wear every day in order to live through the day.
My climbing harness, itâs got to be around four or five years old. Itâs older than we allow in the field, but itâs my personal harness. I wouldnât do it with any of my guys.
MARTIN SMITH: Deckrow said heâs considering closing his company down rather than paying his climbers less or cutting the safety budget even more.
DAVID WEIL, Economics Prof., Boston University: The carrier sets many of the conditions that ultimately affect injuries and fatalities on that work site by setting the amount of money that the people who actually do that work are going to be paid for that work, and therefore, how much they can invest in things like health and safety and paying high enough wages to attract people who might be competent to do that work.
MARTIN SMITH: For carriers, the responsibility for safety ultimately rests with the contractors.
ED REYNOLDS, Fmr. President, Network Services, AT&T: You can take the captain of the ship approach and say if there was a fatality in a subcontractor working two levels down under a turf vendor whoâs working for a network whoâs working for AT&T Mobilityâ I mean, you can say that Randall Stephenson is responsible, you know, because Randall Stephensonâs the CEO of AT&T.
But what impact saying that Randall Stephenson is responsible for that would have on the eventual safety of future crewsâ I think thatâs too far to connect. At what point do you connect? I donât know.
MARTIN SMITH: In the course of our investigation, we obtained this private letter to OSHA from the subcontractors trade group. In it, they urged OSHA to go after carriers and turf vendors that hire unqualified contractors, warning that otherwise, quote, âfatalities are going to continue.â
But three years later, we found out that OSHA doesnât even track which carriers are connected to fatal accidents.
[on camera] At this point in time, you donât collect data on the carriers.
JORDAN BARAB, Department of Labor, OSHA: We donât.
MARTIN SMITH: And is that something that you should be doing?
JORDAN BARAB: Itâs something we could do. Again, itâs a lot of work to try to trace things up to the ultimate owner. But itâsâ it would probably not be a bad idea for us to do that.
MARTIN SMITH: Is it that much work? Donât you just have to ask the subcontractor?
JORDAN BARAB: Well, the subcontractor may not know who the ultimate owner is. The subcontractor may know the general contractor that theyâre working for, and the general contractor then may know whoâ and again, weâre talking about sometimes multiple levels here.
MARTIN SMITH: But itâs only two or three phone calls and you would know who the carrier was.
JORDAN BARAB: Perhaps.
MARTIN SMITH: Were you aware before we shared this information with you that AT&T had a higher incidence of fatalities?
JORDAN BARAB: Iâm not sure, but I donât believe so.
MARTIN SMITH: [voice-over] AT&Tâs letter to FRONTLINE and ProPublica pointed out that tower fatalities across the industry have declined since 2008. There were no deaths on AT&T jobs last year, even though the carrier said its workload increased.
And that workload is going to get even bigger. The competition to build the next generation network, 4G, has already begun.
BOB EGAN, Cell Network Analyst: We have Windows competing with Android, competing with Blackberry, competing with iPhone. And people have high expectations. I think weâre on the cusp of a pretty massive build-out across all of the major networks, in particular Sprint, Verizon and AT&T, to deliver these much higher-speed networks.
MARTIN SMITH: That worries veteran climbers who remember the last big build-out.
CHRIS DECKROW, High Elevation Rescue and Maintenance, LLC: Weâre going to have a bad year as an industry because theyâre going to go on a big push and your $10-an-hour pizza guys that are now climbing for you because you canât afford otherwise are going to start skipping steps.
RAY HULL, Former Tower Climber: It takes years and years of training to know the safety of your equipment. Thereâs guys out there now that are foremen within months of working, starting a job. Thatâs ludicrous!
WINTON WILCOX, Tower Industry Veteran: Thereâs no time to season these employees. Thereâs no time to mature them. Thereâs no time to train them. So we have increasingly less experienced, less trained, less capable individuals doing increasingly large projects at increasing pressure and with decreasing compensation.
MARTIN SMITH: And there will always be more workers like Michael Sulfridge, who was willing to climb towers for $10 an hour and just happy to have a job.
ROSA SULFRIDGE, Michael Sulfridgeâs Mother: These young men are willing to please. You know, whatever the foreman tell them, theyâre going to do it. Itâs a money business. Itâs, âGet the job done, weâre going to get a big check.â Yeah. If you fallâ oh, well.
CHRIS DECKROW: If weâre not properly maintained or trained, then people will die. And itâs only a matter of time.
CELL TOWER DEATHS May 22, 2012
WRITTTEN AND PRODUCED BY Travis Fox
REPORTERS Ryan Knutson, FRONTLINE Liz Day, ProPublica
EDITED BY Maeve OâBoyle Tom Behrens
SENIOR PRODUCER AND CORRESPONDENT Martin Smith
CO-PRODUCERS Habiba Nosheen Ryan Knutson
ASSOCIATE PRODUCER Jennifer Pritheeva Samuel
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY Travis Fox
ORIGINAL MUSIC Joel Douek
ADDITIONAL CAMERA Habiba Nosheen
ADDITIONAL EDITING Steve Audette Mark Dugas
ONLINE EDITOR/COLORIST Jim Ferguson
SOUND MIX Jim Sullivan
ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE CNN ImageSource Thought Equity Motion Kantar Media Joshua Walker Jodi Anderson
FOR PROPUBLICA
SENIOR EDITOR Robin Fields
GENERAL MANAGER Richard Tofel
MANAGING EDITOR Stephen Engelberg
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Paul Steiger
FOR FRONTLINE
DIRECTOR OF BROADCAST Tim Mangini
ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF BROADCAST Chris Fournelle
ON-AIR PROMOTION PRODUCER Missy Frederick
ON-AIR PROMOTION EDITOR John MacGibbon
POST PRODUCTION EDITORS Michael H. Amundson Jim Ferguson Mark Dugas
ASSISTANT EDITOR Eric P. Gulliver
POST PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Megan McGough
SERIES MUSIC Mason Daring Martin Brody
DIRECTOR OF AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT Pamela Johnston
SENIOR PUBLICIST Diane Buxton
ONLINE ENGAGEMENT COORDINATOR Nathan Tobey
SECRETARY Christopher Kelleher
EDITORIAL SECRETARY Katie Lannigan
COMPLIANCE MANAGER Talya Feldman
CONTENT MANAGER Lisa Palone
LEGAL Eric Brass Jay Fialkov Janice Flood Scott Kardel
CONTRACTS MANAGER Lisa Sullivan
UNIT MANAGER Varonica Frye
BUSINESS MANAGER Tobee Phipps
DIGITAL RESEARCH ASSISTANT Jason Breslow
ASSOCIATE PRODUCERS FOR DIGITAL Gretchen Gavett Azmat Khan
PODCAST PRODUCER/REPORTER Arun Rath
DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIST Bill Rockwood
DIGITAL REPORTER Sarah Childress
SENIOR DIGITAL PRODUCER Sarah Moughty
WEBSITE DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY Entropy Media, LLC
DIRECTOR OF NEW MEDIA & TECHNOLOGY Sam Bailey
DEPUTY STORY EDITOR Carla Borras
COORDINATING PRODUCER Robin Parmelee
SENIOR EDITORIAL CONSULTANT Louis Wiley Jr.
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER SPECIAL PROJECTS Michael Sullivan
DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL MEDIA/SENIOR EDITOR Andrew Golis
MANAGING EDITOR Philip Bennett
SERIES MANAGER Jim Bracciale
SERIES SENIOR PRODUCER Raney Aronson-Rath
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER David Fanning
A FRONTLINE production with RAINmedia
Š2012 WGBH EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
FRONTLINE is a production of WGBH/Boston, which is solely responsible for its content.
Explore
Policies
Teacher Center
Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding is provided by the Abrams Foundation; Park Foundation; the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; and the FRONTLINE Trust with major support from Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation, and additional support from Koo and Patricia Yuen. FRONTLINE is a registered trademark of WGBH Educational Foundation. Web Site Copyright Š1995-2025 WGBH Educational Foundation. PBS is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization.








