The site of William "Bubba" Cotton's fatal accident.

Understanding the contracting chain on cell tower jobs can be complicated, but crucial when workers die.

William Bubba Cotton, 43, was the first of 11 cell site workers who died on AT&T projects from 2006 through 2008, years when the carrier merged its network with Cingular and ramped up its 3G network for the iPhone.

As ProPublica and PBS Frontline reported last month, tower climbing ranks among the most dangerous jobs in America, having a death rate roughly 10 times that of construction.

The project Cotton was on involved several layers of subcontractors, which is common in the tower industry. The accident was more unusual. Most of the 50 tower climbers killed on cell site jobs since 2003 have died in falls, but Cotton was crushed to death by an antenna.

A wrongful death lawsuit subsequently filed by Cottons survivors, as well as a personal injury suit filed by his cousin and co-worker, Charles Randy Wheeler, explored two questions at the heart of every tower fatality: Who controlled the tower site? And who was responsible for the safety of the subcontractors working on it?

Heres a breakdown of what happened in the Cotton case:

The Project: An upgrade of a cell site in Talladega, Ala., replacing the antennas on a 400-foot tower. AT&T had designated the upgrade a top priority because of an upcoming NASCAR race, a company manager said in court testimony.

The Subcontractors: To handle the tower work, AT&T (then known as Cingular) hired Nsoro, a large management firm (also known as a turf vendor.) Nsoro hired a subcontractor, WesTower Communications, a large North American tower company. WesTower subcontracted the on-site work to a Missouri-based tower company, ALT Inc.

AT&T also directly hired Florida-based subcontractor Betacom Inc. to work on a concrete equipment shelter at the base of the tower.

See the article here:
Anatomy of a Cell Tower Death