On a sweltering afternoon in July 2020, Belinda Ramones got a call that her brother was in the hospital. The call was from a woman at the Florida landscaping business that he had joined that week, the Davey Tree Expert Co., Ramones said. By the time she arrived, she said, “My brother was swollen up from hands to toes.”
Two days later, her brother, Jose Leandro-Barrera, died at age 45 with acute kidney failure caused by heatstroke, according to a report from the Hillsborough County medical examiner. His temperature in the ambulance had been 108 F, said the report.
It described the circumstances preceding his death, as recorded by a nurse. At the jobsite, Leandro-Barrera had advised his supervisor that he was not feeling well, and the supervisor told him to sit in a vehicle until he felt better. While there, he “urinated himself, had seizure like activity” and became unresponsive.
“Employee suffers from heat exhaustion while doing landscaping,” said an investigation into the incident from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The agency issued a $9,639 fine to the Davey Tree Expert Co. The company did not respond to requests for comment.
Without national regulations on preventing heat-related illness and death, OSHA has difficulty, in general, protecting workers before it’s too late, said Paloma Rentería, a Department of Labor spokesperson.
Laborers have suffered as summers have grown …