Pipe unsafe and only one exit, worker tells wife before tragedy

Chris Barge and Jeff Kass, Rocky Mountain News

Published October 6, 2007 at midnight

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The day before he died, Donnie DeJaynes drove his wife up toXcel's Cabin Creek hydroelectric plant outside Georgetown, to show her concerns he had aboutwork site safety. He helped the 5-foot-3, 120-pound woman squeeze into the doorway at the lower end of the tunnel,which his crew had been coating with epoxy paint. The small doorway, he said, was their only exit should anything go wrong.

GEORGETOWN - A foreman who died with four fellow contract workers deep inside Xcel's Cabin Creek hydroelectric power plant had told his family he did not feel safe on the job.

Donnie DeJaynes kept a log of what he considered to be hazardous working conditions, his family said. That log, they added, was taken by his California-based employer.

DeJaynes' concerns add to the mystery of why five men who were coating the power plant's pipeline died scrambling for their lives. DeJaynes' sister, Laura Stevenson, and his wife, Carolynn DeJaynes, have begun to piece together the chilling details of what happened Tuesday afternoon, when a white hot fire trapped DeJaynes and the others in a pipeline from which they could not escape.

DeJaynes, 43, felt so uneasy the day before he died that he took his wife to the plant to see the circumstances for herself, according to Stevenson.

He helped the 5-foot-3, 120-pound woman squeeze into the doorway at the lower end of the plant's 4,050-foot-long pipeline, which his crew had been coating with epoxy paint. The small doorway, he said, was their only exit should anything go wrong.

"Her comment was, 'Wow, that doesn't look very safe,' " Stevenson told the Rocky Mountain News Friday. "He said, 'No honey. It's not safe at all.' "

Stevenson arrived in Georgetown Thursday to console DeJaynes' widow and to learn more about what happened to her brother and the four others: Dupree Holt, 37; James St. Peters, 52; Gary Foster, 48; and Anthony Aguirre, 18.

According to Stevenson, who talked at length with her sister-in-law, DeJaynes kept the log in his truck, which he had parked at the power plant. RPI Coating, his employer, kept the truck for two days after the fire, the family said. When an employee returned the gray F-150 Thursday, the log was not in it.

A spokesman for RPI did not return phone calls Friday seeking comment on the family's allegation.

In the interview with the Rocky, Stevenson recounted DeJaynes' final days, and the gut-wrenching decision that the survivors faced after the fire broke out.

Four were below fire

The 11 crew members, mostly from California, started work at the plant Sept. 4, and they quickly made an impression on Georgetown. The men became regulars at the town's only two bars, ordering meals and Budweisers.

"They looked like they were worker bees - hard workers," said Cim Fraser, a bartender at the Red Ram in Georgetown's historic downtown area. "They were very nice, very polite."

Their grueling job was to sandblast the inside of a three-quarter mile long pipe that normally carried water from an upper reservoir through a mountain to a hydroelectric power plant more than 1,000 feet below.

The men worked on two alternating crews that basically kept the project going around the clock, Stevenson said. They were on contract into November.

They had finished sandblasting and had moved on to spraying the pipe's interior walls with an epoxy mixture. The two crews had taken turns working in the 12-foot-wide pipe. But on Tuesday, they worked together.

The new mixing machine they were using had started to clog, according to authorities. Someone added thinner to the mix to get the paint moving. Three more gallons sat ready nearby. But authorities believe the machine's thermostat kicked on, providing the spark that ignited fumes and set the fire.

The fire divided the nine men inside the tunnel. Four were below the fire about a quarter of a mile from the door DeJaynes had showed his wife the day before. Five, including DeJaynes, were uphill from the flames.

There were three or four fire extinguishers in the tunnel, but they were not meant for putting out chemical fires, Stevenson said a survivor told her.

The four workers who were in a position to escape frantically tried to help their colleagues on the other side of the flames.

"The people trying to save them could see them until they made the decision to run out of the tunnel," Stevenson said. "The other guys were on the other side, screaming, 'Bring fire extinguishers!' "

As DeJaynes and the four others stood trapped on the wrong side of the fire, one of them kept in radio contact with their superintendent on the surface. Less than 90 minutes later, all communication was lost.

At 7:51 p.m., almost six hours after the fire was reported to 911, a rescue team found the men. They were dead, probably from smoke inhalation.

Screaming for help

Three of the five victims had been staying at the 6 & 40 motel in Idaho Springs, said Sharon O'Neil, who lives in a nearby room. She said one of the survivors tried to sleep Wednesday in the room he had shared with two of the men who died.

"He was crying like a baby," O'Neil said. "And I mean, he's a big dude."

In the two days after the accident, one of the survivors stuck around town, trying to console the victims' family members.

"He kept telling us, 'I did everything I could. I could see them and they kept screaming for me to help them and I was trying,' " Stevenson said.

By Thursday, she said he was so devastated that he couldn't hang around Georgetown any longer. He had his mother pick him up and take him back to California.

The tragedy has triggerd investigations by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, the Clear Creek County Coroner and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.

On Thursday, Stevenson and other grieving family members met with Gov. Bill Ritter.

"We said we want whatever investigation is taking place to be honest and to be conducted in an ethical fashion," Stevenson said.

She believes her brother's log that was in his pickup would aid in that effort. "Yesterday they brought the truck down from the hill, and we could tell it had been gone through," Stevenson said. After seeing the glove compartment door was open she said she asked the RPI employee "who was in this truck?"

He told her he did see people around the truck. She never found out who they were.

bargec@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5059

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