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Part Two: 24 hours on T-REX
'The No. 1 hazard around here is live traffic'
George Kochaniec Jr. © News /
Courtesy News 4
 Traffic moves along I-25 near Colorado
Boulevard. Road construction often requires workers to close lanes of
the freeway, and there is always a risk that disoriented or drunken
drivers will drive through the barricades.
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12:30 p.m.
Along I-25 and the University Boulevard on-ramp, a crew is setting traffic-monitoring and timing devices that will help alleviate congestion.
Jim Bushnell, the manager overseeing that piece of the construction project, says most people don't know how big a role high-tech processes play in the roadway's flow.
The monitors are set up along the highway to check traffic flow and then report back to machines that allow cars to enter at the right moment.
As he talks, his workers hoist a traffic light at a ramp entrance where it will soon be working to warn motorists that they need to stop for the timer.
12:46 p.m.
Perched atop the 40-ton Gomaco Commander III, Marcelino Ramos, 54, looks more like a captain of a ship than the master of a machine that turns wet concrete into barricades.
Most of the time, the machine creeps along at about 10 feet per minute. Ramos pays constant attention to the guide wires strung out below, the ones that convey direction to sensors and keep the Gomaco Commander III on a straight path.
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"If I'm working 12 hours, I'm up here 10. Ten hours, I'm up here eight," says Ramos, a native of Kingsville, Texas, who's lived in Salt Lake City for 40 years and been working on T-REX for two years.
"Yeah, it's long hours, but all my kids are grown up, so it's not so rough. Married? Nah, I'm dee-vorced."
He pauses and then makes a wide sweeping gesture around the machine and smiles. "Maybe from always being up here."
1:03 p.m.
"The No. 1 hazard about working around here is live traffic," paving superintendent Keith LaCrosse says.
Frequently, "crash trucks" - vehicles with special 10-by-10-foot, impact-absorbing cushions called attenuators - are used to try to protect the laborers.
"We've had people that would impact those crash cushions at speeds up to 100 mph," LaCrosse says, shaking his head. "At night, the speed limit is supposed to be 55, but I know that speeds over 70 are not uncommon. It's flat-out dangerous here at night."
Earlier this year, an out-of-control motorist went through a barricade, deflected off a crash truck and went skidding into a T-REX worker, knocking him over a barrier rail.
1:05 p.m.
On Larry Warner's office shelf sits a Tyrannosaurus rex made of chocolate, a four-pack of gum called TREXnd a bottle of Tyrannosaurus Red wine.
"People give me T-REX paraphernalia," Warner says, which is a whole lot better than the headaches he was getting as director of CDOT's Region 6, which includes I-25.
"After five years as an administrator - I'm an engineer by trade - I was suffering a little burnout," he says. Warner's new life as T-REX project director for CDOT consists of meetings, phone calls, meetings, reading reports, meetings, building partnerships, meetings and meetings. But he loves it.
"I work harder, but it's more fulfilling," says Warner, 48. "And I haven't had to fire anybody."
1:25 p.m.
Sam Mojabi, 48, a grading superintendent along Segment 3, T-REX's southernmost area, checks out the progress on excavation for what will be a retaining wall on the Park-n-Ride garage for the Orchard Station on the new light-rail line.
Mojabi, born in Shiraz, Iran, but a longtime resident of the U.S., has lived in Salt Lake City for nearly 30 years. Now he lives in the metro area - alone. His wife of 27 years and their three children - 25, 16, 12 - are back in Utah.
"I go home about every three weeks - sometimes I drive, sometimes I fly," Mojabi says. "Working this job can be tough. It's challenging to live without your family."
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1:30 p.m.
An excavator digs and pounds a trench into the ground where a new drainage pipe is being set to replace one that's proven problematic.
The new pipe - 30 inches wide and made of interconnecting, 1,000-pound concrete links - will stretch about 3,400 feet.
Eventually, rainwater will flow through the pipe and into a pond before filtering into the Platte River.
Baldemar Fontes, 40, slides a gasket on one end of a pipe piece where it will be joined to another, and smears a goopy substance around it to make sure the two easily slide together.
He's been working nonstop since 9 a.m., and he and his crew have put together about 100 feet of the pipe.
2:22 p.m.
Brent McFadyen, 30-year-old native of Michigan whose disposition is almost as sunny as the weather, works on erosion control, euphemistically known as "sediment management."
Either way, he digs trenches, builds silt fences, lays down dams made of hay bales - whatever it takes - to help keep storm drainage areas free of debris and silt.
McFadyen squints into the sun.
"This is pretty much grunt work. A lot of guys can't handle this, but it's all right with me. I like it. I been doing stuff like this since I was 18."
Barry Gutierrez © News
Mealtime in the
construction zone illustrates that while much heavy equipment is being
used in the T-REX project, human beings keep it all running, and they
need to be fueled, too. Here, Jesus Baeza displays what he brought for
lunch, a jalapeño pepper and a burrito. All photography »
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Barry Gutierrez © News
Known among co-workers as Los Hermanos, or "The
Brothers," Salvador Baeza, 26, left, Ricardo Baeza, 28, and Jesus
Baeza, 34, pose for a portrait on their lunch break near the Washington
Street bridge. They were transforming a mound of dirt into the base for
the southbound I-25 off-ramp at Washington Street.
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2:30 p.m.
Los Hermanos and others on their crew haven't let up as they push their way through the end of their day near the Washington Street exchange.
They're busy placing metal railing in the area where motorists will first leave the highway and enter the off-ramp.
The crew members work in sync, with one grabbing a railing and connecting it, the other setting it in place, and so on, until they have a good 150 feet completed.
Nearby, the man on the cherry picker is close to finishing both panels, with only a few more feet to go before he reaches the top.
He moves fast, paying attention to filling in every empty inch of the soon-to-be walls. An hour later, he finishes his work as foreman Ricardo Baeza makes his way over, his face dripping with sweat.
"Another day," he says.
2:38 p.m.
Sue Holfert admits she has no life. She doesn't have time for one.
Ensconced in her cubbyhole at the Evans Field Office in an old Pier One store, the dispatch coordinator explains that every piece of equipment moved along the 17-mile corridor goes through her first.
"Every loader, every dozer, every backhoe, every roller, every man-lift - I know where it's at and where it's supposed to be. If it moves, I know about it," she says.
Although her official workday doesn't find Holfert at her desk much before 6:30 a.m., "I sometimes start getting calls from drivers at home by 4," she says.
Luckily, she has an understanding spouse: Holfert's husband, Tom, works for T-REX as an erosion-control superintendent.
Dennis Schroeder © News
Raul Terrazas, of Westminster, spaces cement
ties for new light-rail track along I-25 at Belleview Avenue. Crews are
using satellite information to make sure passengers will have a smooth
ride over the Belleview bridge.
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3 p.m.
The late afternoon sun bakes the four construction workers drilling and hammering steel rails onto wooden tracks.
The heat doesn't seem to faze them as they pound away on the curvy, embryonic light-rail track. When complete, the track will lead to a sparkling new $40 million home for RTD's light-rail fleet.
Located off Santa Fe Drive and Dartmouth Avenue in Englewood, the new 100,000-square-foot maintenance facility will eventually accommodate about 100 trains.
"Every train in the system will come here every night," says Steve Logan, project manager for the facility, which should be done in April 2004.
Logan talks about the arch-shaped building like a proud papa. He boasts about the facility's nine maintenance bays, the large locker rooms and lounge areas for drivers, and the high-tech hydraulic ramps that will raise the trains so mechanics can remove their wheels for repair.
The 100 or so workers on site seem just as committed as Logan.
"Hey boss, where's your safety glasses?" one yells.
Logan looks embarrassed and puts them on.
3:12 p.m.
Fifteen feet above the cacophony of I-25 traffic, foreman Bill Street watches Baldimore Quintana and Abel Guzman put on "whalers," a term for 2-by-4 lumber used on forms for concrete shaping.
"They hold the form together on the pier cap," Street says.
This pier cap is atop Bridge 8, which will eventually be part of the on-ramp at Emerson Street. Despite the heat of the day, Street is wearing a long-sleeved shirt.
"Heck, I've got it on because of that West Nile thing. Don't wanna get bit by one of those mosquitoes."
3:28 p.m.
Lugging coolers and cutting torches, Noe Dominguez and Pedro Ontavaros, both 33, walk past the scalloped and gouged earth near I-25 and Emerson Street as their shift ends.
"A good day," Dominguez says.
How come?
He grins. "Day is over."
3:43 p.m.
Michael Palka might be the filthiest man in the realm of T-REX. The 38-year-old is caked with mud, from the top of his hard hat to the tip of his boots.
"I'm cleaning out manholes," he says, standing on the lip of a cavernous trench being dug near the confluence of Quincy Avenue and Olive Street. "All that rain we had recently flooded out the trench boxes, and mud got down there. I had to see what was going on."
Manholes aside, Palka makes sure that all the utilities in the ground are located and won't be disrupted by the new sewer line that will be installed soon. He and dirt are no strangers.
"It's the washing machine that I really abuse," he says.
4:11 p.m.
In a storage yard adjacent to the Southmoor Park-n-Ride lot, hundreds of orange highway cones erupt like stalagmites. An equal number of orange-and-black road signs are as thick as trees in a forest.
Moving through this jumble of steel and plastic, laborers Jasmin Jasarevic, Sakib Delic and Ricky Statewright pluck and lift what they need and put it on the truck.
"We get ready for closing highway tonight," says Jasarevic, 24, like Delic, a native of Bosnia. Then, hefting a "LEFT LANE CLOSED 2000 FT." sign, he adds with a smile, "We put signs on truck, take them off truck, put them on highway."
The 6-foot-6 Statewright lugs a "RIGHT LANE CLOSED 1000 FT." sign in one hand and a "RAMP CLOSED AHEAD" sign in the other. The work's not bad, the 31-year-old Montbello native says.
"You just gotta be careful. When you're putting signs out on the highway, you got cars flying at you all the time, y'know."
Dennis Schroeder © News
Sakib Delic, a native of
Bosnia, carries a sign that will direct traffic through the T-REX
construction zone. A co-worker, Ricky Statewright, says of the job:
"You just gotta be careful. You got cars flying at you all the time."
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