| RELEASE: CONTACT: |
IMMEDIATE Sande Snead 804-225-4491 Sande.Snead@VDOT.virginia.gov Joan Morris 703-383-2465 |
CO-conova May 4, 2005 |
Plan for safe drilling in U.S. Army land-mine testing area wins recognition
RICHMOND - A well-executed plan to safely drill holes for soil samples in a U.S. Army land- mine testing area earned three Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) employees one of seven Governor's Awards presented at a ceremony in Richmond today.
Sharon Morales and Thomas R. "Tom" Scallorn, safety and health engineers in VDOT's Central Office in Richmond, and Carlin L. Hall, geologist in the agency's Northern Virginia District, received The Governor's Award for Workplace Safety. Six other awards were given in different categories.
Early in the preliminary engineering stage of a project at the U.S. Army's Engineering Proving Grounds at Fort Belvoir, VDOT realized that the site would offer extensive and unique challenges, particularly from a safety standpoint.
The last remaining section of the Fairfax County Parkway was to be advertised as a design-build project with VDOT supplying a significant portion of the geotechnical information (soil-boring logs) as part of the bid package.
About half of the proposed alignment of the remaining section of the parkway passed through the proving grounds. This land parcel had been used since the early 1940s by the Army to test land-mine detection equipment and techniques. An electro-magnetic survey revealed a number of unmarked burial pits, each containing between a few hundred to more than 1,000 mines. Approximately 20 percent of the mines found in each pit were fully fused.
Hall, Morales and Scallorn developed a drilling safety plan to navigate this dangerous area. The plan required that every footstep of every driller be first cleared by a minesweeper. Also, the probable fall zone of each tree felled in the heavily wooded area had to be cleared.
By closely following this plan, the 51 borings inside the Engineering Proving Grounds were completed three days ahead of schedule, and the entire drilling program was performed without a single injury to any of the 13 VDOT field personnel involved in the geotechnical investigation.
Page last modified: May 4, 2005
