Families of City Employees in Georgia Are Calling for Answers and Safety Reforms

No city can function healthily or safely without consistent maintenance of its infrastructure. It should go without saying that the people performing this work deserve to have their own health and safety respected. No matter how inherently dangerous a task may be, every city has a responsibility to provide its workers with whatever support will minimize that danger to the greatest extent possible.

When accidents do happen, victims and families have a right to expect honesty and accountability from local government. Unfortunately, many survivors of city works accidents have reported experiences far removed from this ideal.

The Workers Trapped in the Albany Sewer Collapse Reportedly Had No Trench Box

On December 18th, 2024, a trench collapsed during sewer repairs in Albany, Georgia, near North Harding Street and West Society Avenue, trapping two city workers. Rescue crews spent hours digging for the victims with a backhoe, and were able to save one of their lives. The survivor has been stabilized under hospital care, but the other victim, 28-year-old Sebastian Dykes Jr., was already dead by the time first responders reached him.

The trench Dykes was working in was reportedly not equipped with a trench box — a rigid reinforcement for construction trenches designed to prevent exactly this kind of accident. Dykes’s brother, a fellow Albany city worker, says that trench box usage came up during a safety meeting days before the accident, but that this discussion did not lead to proper safety measures at the site.

Sebastian Dykes Sr., father of the deceased, has also reported that the city ordered both of his sons to perform work they were not qualified for on various occasions. He believes his son’s death was, in part, the result of this lack of adequate training.

OSHA standards require safety reinforcements for all trenches five feet or deeper, but OSHA isn’t funded or authorized to help protect the safety of local government employees. Instead, the state government itself has jurisdiction over these incidents.

Albany’s Mayor Bo Dorough has made a statement, promising an internal investigation and a review of safety policies, but in spite of Bo Dorough’s assurances of transparency, journalists’ questions have gone unanswered.

A frustrating lack of meaningful response seems to be a pattern, when it comes to city workers’ deaths and safety concerns in Georgia.

Albany Lost Another City Worker Less Than a Year Ago

Darrious Stephens was a 36-year-old Albany Public Works employee, who went missing while collecting water samples along the bank of the Flint River, during a rainstorm in February of 2024.

It took three weeks for emergency services to find his body, and another week to confirm his identity. The remains were visually unrecognizable, including fingerprints and dental work, when pulled from the river.

It’s understandable for a search of the river to be difficult, especially in rough weather. However, the frustration and concerns Stephens’s family expressed after his disappearance went beyond the difficulty of waiting for news.

Much like Dykes’s family, Stephens’s brother has argued that the city’s safety protocols, and execution of those protocols, weren’t adequate to protect him. Stephens could not swim, according to his surviving brother, and was not accompanied at the river’s edge, in spite of city policy requiring workers to perform tasks like these in pairs.

Again mirroring the aftermath of Dykes’s death, Albany’s city representatives largely refused to answer questions following the loss of Stephens. Loved ones and safety advocates have understandably found this policy of silence unsatisfying.

Albany is also not alone among Georgia cities in having lost city works employees in recent, arguably preventable accidents.

The Albany Collapse Came Right on the Heels of a Similar Collapse in Rome

Less than two weeks before the death of Sebastian Dykes Jr., another trench collapsed during sewer repairs in Rome, Georgia. As far as public details go, the two incidents are practically identical. Two people were trapped when the Rome trench collapsed, and only one could be saved. The deceased in that case, 55-year-old James Rayburn, was still alive when rescue crews reached the victims, but died under hospital care.

Patterns like this make workplace accidents even more inexcusable. It’s one thing for a company or organization to be taken off guard by a random, unpredictable tragedy. It’s quite another for them to ignore known dangers and readily available safety tools, allowing not just one preventable death but a potentially endless series of them.

For context, it would be extremely difficult for a private company that entertains guests, such as a theme park, to get away with ignoring an ongoing safety issue. If one guest gets crushed under a falling piece of scenery, the park fails to secure that piece of scenery, and another guest suffers the same fate a few weeks later, the second guest’s family will have a decisively strong case against the park for wrongful death. Even the first guest’s family could likely bring a successful suit, if there was any way for the park to predict the first collapse, based on other parks’ experiences or common sense.

So, it’s worth asking, why are city governments seemingly free to ignore safety with minimal consequences? Technically, they’re responsible for the safety of their employees, but between the jurisdictional issues mentioned above, and the limits of worker’s comp law, enforcing that responsibility can be a real challenge.

Victims and Families May Need to Look Beyond City Governments for Compensation

Worker’s comp law allows workers and their families to collect partial compensation for workplace accidents, without needing to wait for an investigation or prove who was at fault.

As a trade-off for this system, however, employers enjoy immunity to most personal injury and wrongful death suits. Essentially, if an injured person or grieving family is able to collect worker’s comp, they’re not eligible to sue the employer for the same incident. It doesn’t matter how negligent the employer’s behavior was, or how many unpaid bills the worker’s comp settlement leaves.

Employer immunity applies equally to private companies and government organizations. It doesn’t mean, however, that victims of workplace accidents shouldn’t reach out for legal help. Like many general rules, employer immunity does have both exceptions and work-arounds.

For example, accidents often happen as a result of multiple mistakes, made by multiple parties. This means that many people collecting worker’s comp do have the right to sue someone other than the employer for more complete compensation.

In the case of the sewer collapse accidents, possible defendants other than the city might include:

• The manufacturer of any equipment that failed, including safety gear.
• Any third-party contractors who worked on the site and contributed to the unsafe conditions.
• The owner of the property where the accident happened, especially if the owner made modifications that violated building codes.

If you are next of kin to Sebastian Dykes Jr., Darrious Stephens, James Rayburn, or another Georgia public works employee lost on the job, or if you were injured in either of these trench collapses, please feel free to reach out to the Stoddard Firm for a free consultation on your options.