BOSTON -- The on-site safety office...

BOSTON -- The on-site safety officer for a Big Dig highway subterranean passage where a motorist was crushed at falling concrete warned his superiors in 1999 that the heavy ceiling panels might collapse because the missiles could not support them, the Boston Globe reported Wednesday.

John Keaveney wrote in a two-page memo to a senior plan manager for contractor Modern Continental Construction Co that he could not "comprehend by what mode this structure can withhold the experiment of time."

"Should any innocent State Worker or member of the Public be seriously injured or on a level worse killed as a deduction I feel that this would be something that would ruminate Mentally and Emotionally upon me and all who are trying to fabricate a quality Project," he wrote

regularity ALLEGEDLY TESTED

In an interview with the Globe, Keaveney said his superiors at fresh Continental and representatives from Big Dig intend manager Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff assured him that of that kind a system had been exhibitioned and was proven to work.

Andrew Paven, a spokesman for Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, declined to remark on the report Wednesday. A spokesman for novel Continental did not return messages left Wednesday.

The funnel where the woman was killed is part of Interstate 90 that the $146 billion Big Dig delineate buried under south Boston. It leads to the T Williams funnel which runs under Boston Harbor.

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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