Insurer to pay ‘lost time’ benefits to families of van crash victims

BANGOR – A Massachusetts insurance company will pay “lost time” benefits to the dependents of the 14 foreign workers who died a week ago on their way to work in the Allagash Wilderness Waterway.

The 14 men from Honduras and Guatemala died last Thursday morning after the van in which they were riding at speeds in excess of 50 miles per hour flipped off John’s Bridge and plunged into 15 feet of water. There was only one survivor of the crew that was in Maine to thin trees on privately owned forest property.

Liberty Mutual of Massachusetts “has accepted the claims and we will be paying the ‘lost time’ benefits,” said John Cusolito, vice president of external affairs for the insurance company.

Under the state’s workers’ compensation law, Liberty Mutual had 14 days from last Friday, the date the initial claims were filed by the workers’ employer, Evergreen Forestry Services of Idaho, to pay or deny benefits.

On Tuesday, Liberty Mutual announced it would pay burial benefits totaling $7,000 to the victims’ families. The state workers’ compensation law specifies that the victims’ families or whoever pays burial expenses are entitled to up to $4,000 for actual burial costs and up to $3,000 for incidental expenses, such as transportation. Cusolito said even if it costs less than $7,000 to prepare the men’s bodies for burial and transport them back to their homelands that the insurance company would pay the full benefit.

“Lost-time” benefits will be paid for a period of 500 weeks based on a formula written in the workers’ compensation law. Spouses or dependents will be paid 80 percent of the average net weekly wage of their deceased family member, said Steven P. Minkowsky, deputy director of the state’s Workers’ Compensation Board. If a victim left behind a spouse with dependents, an amount would be decided based on the number of people living in a household, he said. And if the 500 weeks end before a child becomes 18 years old, the child would continue to receive benefits.

The “lost-time” benefits, though, are not to exceed a cap of $491.35 per week, Minkowsky said.

Because the average weekly wage of each victim has not been computed yet, Liberty Mutual will be sending each family “provisional payments” in the meantime, Cusolito said, “so they can receive assistance as soon as possible.”

Any disputes of the average weekly wage would be reviewed under a board dispute resolution process, he said.