KSHB 41 reporter Isabella Ledonne reports on stories in Overland Park, Johnson County and topics about government accountability. Share your story idea with Isabella.
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Safety regulators fined a company for violations in a deadly trench collapse last year in Kansas City, Kansas.
Around 2 p.m. on July 24, 2025, rescue crews from the Kansas City, Kansas, Fire Department raced to a worksite in the area of South 16th Street and Metropolitan Avenue. Reports indicated a worker was trapped in a trench being dug to lay fiber optic cables.
Nearly nine hours later, crews were finally able to locate the body of the worker, later identified as Francisco Rodriguez, 54, of KCK.
RELATED | 'It is not safe': BPU Water Department and UG flagged concerns 2 days before fatal trench collapse
Eight months after the fatal collapse, the area off of Metropolitan Avenue and South 16th Street in KCK looks similar. The ground was damp from the rain and the terrain was uneven. That was a concern for workers before digging to install fiber optic.
According to a report finalized earlier this year, investigators with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited telecommunications contractor, K&W Underground, with three violations and issued total penalties of more than $66,000.
But other safety concerns, according to OSHA's investigation, weren't known until now. The company's violations from the fatal 2025 collapse were repeat violations from 2022.
Cameron Seip is a member of local labor union 1290 and regularly handles OSHA training.
"You see people get buried in trenches, it hurts all of us," Seip said. "When you're being pushed for productivity, one of the first things to go will be safety if you're not mindful of it."
OSHA found three safety violations leading up to the fatal collapse.
In one violation, investigators found the company did not provide a means of escape for workers in the trench that met regulations requiring a stairway, ladder, ramp, or “other safe means of egress” in trench excavations four feet or more in depth so that a worker requires no more than 25 feet of lateral travel to escape.
In the second violation, investigators say the company failed to provide protection to keep excavated materials or equipment at least two feet away from the edge of the excavations or by using sufficient retaining devices. Investigators noted that dirt that had been excavated from the trench had been placed into piles directly along the north and south edges of the trench. They concluded that the pile from the north side collapsed, engulfing Rodriguez.
In the third violation, inspectors say K&W Underground “failed to ensure that employees were protected from a trench collapse by utilizing a trench box, adequate shoring, sloping or benching as a means of protection.”
The report details that all three violations were present on July 24 and in the days prior to the collapse.
"All of these things are completely avoidable," Seip said. "Completely avoidable."
All the violations in the July 2025 incident were repeat violations.
OSHA records reveal K&W was cited for the same types of violations in connection with an incident on Aug. 9, 2022, in Louisburg, Kansas. OSHA fined the company a total of $28,423 for four violations.
Those citations stemmed from a worker complaint. It was not stated if any workers were injured as a result of the 2022 safety violations.
"If you have repeated violations, that should be a huge indication to the community," Seip said.
Despite the previous warnings, the same deadly mistakes were made three years later and cost the company $66,730 in fines.
It's left labor workers like Seip wondering one question.
"How do you put a price on a person's life?" Seip asked.
KSHB 41 News reached out to company, K&W Underground, multiple times on Tuesday for a comment on the OSHA findings. We did not receive a response by time of this story's updated publication.
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