Spaghetti Bowl night shift tackles danger, deadlines

Tom Patton weaves his way through the construction site at the Spaghetti Bowl wearing a white hard hat.

The hard hat is for safety, but one wonders how much safety the piece of plastic can provide from the 60-ton concrete bridge segments passing five-stories overhead or the big rigs and other vehicles speeding by just a few feet away.

As manager of the project overhauling the interchange, Patton steps through the dusty medians pointing out the dangers that his crews face. The dangers of traffic and heavy machinery are daunting, but consider adding the element of darkness and they can become terrifying.

That's part of the daily shift for the 25 night-crew workers untying the knots of the Spaghetti Bowl, work that should be completed by October 2000.

"The goal of this project is to build the new bridges and off-ramps while at the same time keeping lanes open to traffic," Patton, of Meadow Valley Construction, said. "To do that, we have to do some work at night."

So starting at 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, the night crew takes over construction on the interchange's four new flyover bridges while the neon of Fremont Street twinkles a short distance away.

The key to night road construction is planning because of the short time frame that the work must be done in, Patton said.

"The shift lasts from 9 p.m to 5 a.m., but the work actually starts closer to 10 p.m. and ends at 4 a.m.," Patton said.

"There is one hour at each end that we have to use to move equipment in and out.

"It's imperative that all the crews think through the work plan and all the steps involved, and that becomes especially necessary at night."

Every morning Patton meets with the supervisors of the night and day crews at the Spaghetti Bowl to plan out the day's construction. The night crew at the Spaghetti Bowl will lock two new 12-foot sections of bridge into place on a night when everything is clicking.

So far that has been most nights, with the shift registering no accidents in more than 415 days of work, Patton said.

Keeping the nights safe at a road work site means dealing with the threat of oncoming traffic, said Dennis Davis, area manager for Kiwet Industrial Co.

"There is a big difference in safety on night jobs compared to day jobs," Davis said.

"During the day, it's easy for drivers to see workers, but at night it's dark and you have to make sure that drivers can see you working."

Signs, reduced speeds in work zones, portable lighting units and reflectors are all used to help protect night workers.

At the Spaghetti Bowl site, crews are working from a median of U.S. 95 as the bridge from northbound Interstate 15 to westbound U.S. 95 is constructed. The triangular median is bordered by eastbound and westbound traffic, giving workers a small area to work and little room for error.

Meadow Valley puts concrete barriers between the workers and the traffic where it can, but sometimes drivers just don't pay attention, Patton said.

"We get drunk drivers through here, and it's scary," Patton said.

"We try to keep one eye on the oncoming traffic at all times."

Drivers usually slow down the first few times they are shifted to a new detour, but once they become use to it, their speed increases and the traffic flow picks up speed, Nevada Highway Patrol Trooper Scott Flabi said.

To help slow drivers down through the intersection at night, Highway Patrol cars often park with lights flashing near the site on U.S. 95.

The presence of the patrol helps slow the traffic, but alertness by workers is still the best prevention, Patton said.

"When you're working out here you start to see the traffic as a constant flow," Patton said.

"You almost get lulled into seeing it as a continuous stream, like a river. You can get use to it, but you always have to pay attention to it."

Joe Dasher, a 22-year veteran of road construction jobs, knows the dangers well. He ran the swing shift on the Desert Inn arterial when it was being built and agrees that traffic is the biggest safety risk during road work.

"We were working a shift 2:30 p.m. to midnight on DI, and we were always looking out for the traffic after it got dark," said Dasher, a member of the Southern Nevada Laborers Training Trust.

"With that shift, we not only had night traffic but rush-hour traffic to worry about."

After midnight, it gets more dangerous. Not only may drivers be a little less alert, but the workers themselves may become drowsy as the shift wears on and pay less attention to the critical work they are doing, Dasher said.

"I don't know if you ever get used to working past midnight and into the morning," Dasher said.

"Research has shown that we get our best sleep from midnight until 5 a.m."

That leads to cheating on sleep.

"When I was working until midnight, I was too wound up to go to sleep when I got home. Then I'd get up in the morning and say I was going to get a nap before going to work, but I'd never get it."

At the Spaghetti Bowl, the night shift is made up of the same group every night so that workers can get their internal clocks set to their work schedule, Patton said.

The dangers aside, the night shift offers both disadvantages and advantages, Dasher said.

"If a piece of equipment goes down at night, you can't go to the rental yard and get a new one because everything is closed," he said.

"The good thing about it is on a night shift there are usually less people looking over your shoulder while you work."

For some the night shift is a nice working environment because it allows crews to get side work in the morning, but Dasher says that's not for him.

"Personally I went into construction because I like to start early in the morning and finish my day around 2 or 3 in the afternoon," Dasher said.

"That way I get home when the kids get out of school and I have the whole afternoon to spend time with my family."

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