Dzzzt

I offer this domestic tale.

Ten years ago this month, just after my husband B.C. the electrician and I were married, I returned home to find a hunk of melted, blackened metal and red rubber sitting on the kitchen counter. It was vaguely familiar.

My husband perched opposite the twisted lump, studying it. He was finishing his second Guinness before dinner.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Wrench," he answered into the bottle.

"What happened to it?" I didn't want to know, but I had to.

"Dzzzt."

"Dazzzuht?" I was pretty sure I understood.

"DZZZT."

I instinctively grabbed the bottle from his left hand. He wasn't burned, but he was trembling. "It was a live panel," he said.

It was an OSHA violation - my husband poking what amounted to a lightening rod into a storm cloud - but contractors and their workers do it all the time. You can't just turn off the juice. Losing electricity while someone works is extremely inconvenient.

So is losing your husband, your son or your brother.

It's difficult for me, the wife of someone whose work is inherently dangerous, to understand why he or his employer would make it more so.

It's especially puzzling because the electrician in question is an absolute safety nut - at work, at home, and as an avid skier and sailor. He's got advanced first-aid training and often runs his company's safety programs. He strictly adheres to the electrical code and God help the customer or general contractor who suggests that he let something slide.

But like an adolescent on prom night who slips behind the wheel after one too many, he is certain that nothing bad can happen to him - not here and not now.

And oh does he complain about OSHA - about how the agency assesses penalties to keep itself afloat. In B.C.'s mind, OSHA and safety are mutually exclusive. I get the sense that a lot of you agree with him.

About six months ago, we began publishing every Wisconsin construction-related OSHA citation. We didn't go on a witch hunt in an attempt to embarrass contractors. Our reporters contact each contractor individually, giving them a week to respond. We list not only the citation, but its disposition, including negotiated settlements.

Our reporters found that although the contractors they called initially were offended by our questions, they began to understand the insight these listings offer. By keeping up with recent citations, readers learn what sorts of violations OSHA officials search for, what types of settlements the agency is willing to make and which contractors in which regions are being targeted. Many of those angry, OSHA-bitten contractors have subscribed to the newspaper.

In a few months, we'll build an Internet database that will allow subscribers to search citations by region, nature of the violation and type of contractor. We'll also link you to OSHA's own Web site and tell you how to make sense of it.

And we're pleased to offer the articles in this special report, "On the Safe Side." We're giving you all the information we can collect to help you make smart business decisions that help keep your sites safe.

We'll do what we can to highlight the problems, but it's up to you to tie compliance to safety.

A few months ago, I told you that this newspaper considers itself part of the construction family. As a relative who knows you work in a dangerous business, we're asking you to please take care.

- Liz Oplatka

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