Tragedy in the Woods

A year ago, many Mainers learned for the first time that hundreds of Central American men spend their summers toiling in the Maine woods. They learned this after 14 of these men died when the van they were riding in plunged off a remote logging road bridge into the Allagash Wilderness Waterway.

In the aftermath of the Sept. 12 accident, those close to the men from Honduras and Guatemala and many who had no connection to them went through the gamut of emotions that follow a tragedy. There was sorrow at the lives so quickly lost and heartache for the widows and dozens of children they left behind, often in dire poverty. Then there was anger at landowners who supposedly overworked the men and made them drive long distances to and from the woods work. There were also questions about why state and federal regulators didn’t do more to ensure that such an accident didn’t happen.

A year later, it has become increasingly clear that the crash was less a symptom of deeper problems in the woods and more what it first appeared, a terrible tragedy, the worst traffic accident in the state’s history. Simply put, the accident happened because the van driver, a 26-year-old Honduran, approached John’s Bridge too fast and off-center. The van’s left wheels were on the crossbeams between the two sets of wood planking meant for driving on. It appears the driver tried to correct the situation, but the van continued to move to the right, eventually dragging along the I-beam at the edge of the bridge before plunging over the side. The brakes were never applied, according to an accident reconstruction report.

“Imprudent speed and driver inattention are the primary causes of this crash,” Maine State Police Trooper Corey Hafford wrote in the accident reconstruction report. “Had the driver been traveling at a prudent speed and been centered on the bridge as he approached, this motor vehicle crash would not have occurred,” Trooper Hafford concluded.

Given this conclusion, it is not clear that changing “the system,” as some lawmakers and advocates have suggested, would have saved the men’s lives.

The system, i.e. the increasing use of foreign labor to perform jobs Americans would rather not do, is not unique to Maine or forestry. Those who complain that it is not right to have Central Americans thin trees should also object to Mexicans picking blueberries, Lithuanians serving tea and popovers in restaurants and Hungarians making beds at coastal hotels. Many complain that the $10 an hour paid to the foreign woods workers is too low. It is and the U.S. Department of Labor, which mandates this minimum wage, should raise it meaningfully. But it is not clear that more Maine residents would do the work even for higher wages. The problem is not the pay alone but the pay coupled with the difficulty of working in remote woods, in all types of weather, endlessly cutting down small trees with a heavy brush saw.

Woods landowners were criticized for housing workers far from work sites. In fact, workers choose where to live and this crew decided to live in Caribou, more than two hours from the land they were working on, and not in a closer community. Attempts to provide housing in the woods have fallen out of favor in the past, but the state’s largest landowner, J.D. Irving Ltd., is going to try it again. By next year, the company hopes to have a camp, complete with a cook, set up in the woods. It remains to be seen whether workers will want to live there, far from the diversions of even a small town.

There have been other positive steps since the accident. The Forest Resources Association, a coalition of landowners, gave first-aid, brush-saw operation and van-driving courses to more than 260 workers this summer. The courses, many taught in Spanish, will be reviewed for possible improvement later this month before being offered again next year.

The biggest disappointment since the accident remains the U.S. Department of Labor, which earlier this year moved to revoke the license of the contractor who employed the men killed in the accident. His license was to be lifted for violations of labor law, including failure to provide workers with safe transportation, because the van was driven at imprudent speed, and to properly register the driver of the van.

However, because Evergreen Forestry Services did not renew its license earlier this year, the department dropped the proceedings. Problem is that Evergreen popped up again in Maine this year with a new name, Progressive Environmental, but basically the same management and many of the same employees. The Maine Department of Labor says it cannot investigate the ownership and past record of a company; that is up to the U.S. Department of Labor. The Maine labor department approved Progressive to hire 340 foreign workers in Maine this summer because “they followed the procedures.” An official at the federal department said the conversion of Evergreen to Progressive was “interesting.”

With the perspective of a year, the tragedy seems less likely to point toward significant changes in the woods, even as the sadness remains.