PHILADELPHIA — The two construction workers killed last week when struck by a PATCO train on the Ben Franklin bridge were walking on a track that was supposed to have been shut down while concrete work was in progress, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.
The two were killed the night of Oct. 14 while working on the bridge that connects Philadelphia and Camden, N.J. [see “Two workers killed …,” Trains News Wire, Oct. 15, 2022]. They were identified as Victor Martins, 55, and Donato Fiocca, 53, by their union, Cement Mason’s and Plasterers’ Union Local No. 592.
National Transportation Safety Board spokeswoman Jennifer Gabis said in an emailed statement to the Inquirer that the men there was a planned outage of Track 2 on the bridge, but that “preliminary information indicates that at the time of the accident, Track 2 had not been taken out of service when the contractors entered the bridge in a close cdearance area.”
The NTSB, U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and Delaware River Port Authority are investigating the accident. The DRPA runs the bridge and PATCO (the Port Authority Transit Corp.), which operates the rail line between Philadelphia and Lindenwold, N.J.
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