Champion of worker safety, Evans dies at 50

Tuesday, July 18, 2000 | 9:50 a.m.

Following the 1988 chemical explosion at the PEPCON plant that killed two and injured 300, longtime Henderson resident and labor leader Danny Evans was named to a governor's panel to investigate the incident.

While some management officials on that blue ribbon committee were skeptical of the union man, he soon won a number of them over with his passion to get at the cause of the disaster without tainting it with politics or rhetoric.

Five years later a number of those management officials supported Evans' appointment as administrator of Nevada's Occupational Safety and Health Administration, where he was a tireless champion of protecting the worker.

Dan W. Evans, who cracked down on poor safety practices of major employers including big hotels and the Yucca Mountain Project, died Sunday. He was 50.

Evans, the brother of former longtime Nevada AFL-CIO leader Claude "Blackie" Evans, died at his Henderson home following a brief battle with a rare form of bone cancer, his family said.

Services for the Henderson resident of 32 years will be 3 p.m. Wednesday at Palm Mortuary-Eastern.

"I often teased my brother that he was so dedicated to labor that he often leaned too much toward management to show that he was not pro-labor," Blackie Evans said.

"He took his job as OSHA director so seriously that he would go to the scenes of where workers were killed to learn all he could about the accidents. Then he would go home and cry about those deaths -- that's how much they affected him."

Danny Evans had been on sick leave from his job since March, when he was diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma, a rare disease that more often strikes children. He had become dizzy while attending a meeting with federal officials in Baltimore.

In the last year of his life, Evans served on a federal commission to overhaul OSHA laws, especially those that address industrial deaths. Recently Secretary of Labor Alexis Herman, who had appointed Evans to the commission, honored him at a meeting that Evans was too ill to attend.

"Henderson has long been the home of working men and women, and Danny was one of them," said former Nevada Gov. Mike O'Callaghan, publisher of the Henderson Home News. "He never forgot his fellow workers as he moved into a state position designed to protect them at work.

"His efforts in recent years have been dedicated to making workplaces safe for all Nevadans."

Born Jan. 7, 1950, in Galena, Kan., Evans worked at the Titanium Metals Corp., plant in Henderson during the summers before his junior and senior years at Galena High. He moved to Southern Nevada after graduating in 1968.

Evans went to work for Stauffer Chemical where he served as a pipe fitter apprentice for four years. He was employed at the plant as a pipe fitter and welder for 25 years, serving for a time as president of United Steel Workers of America Local 5282.

After his stint on the PEPCON blue ribbon panel, Evans was appointed by then-Gov. Bob Miller to head OSHA -- a move that came under fire from some business leaders because of Evans' and his brother's strong union ties.

Miller, who had served with Evans on the commission investigating the explosion at the Pacific Engineering and Production Co. plant, defended his selection of Evans to the post, saying Evans was highly qualified through his work experience and his service on state boards.

Evans also had served on the state Occupational Safety and Health Review Board.

At the time of his OSHA appointment, Evans vowed to be impartial in dealing with management, saying, "I have been dealing with management for most of my adult life. I have a great deal of compassion for business."

Still, when a major employer did not meet the high safety standards Evans sought, it was hit with significant fines. In 1996 Timet was fined $125,265 for numerous safety violations, including one that contributed to a worker's death that January.

In 1994 the Mirage was fined $130,125 by OSHA for safety violations involving the Strip resort's popular exploding volcano display that was deemed unsafe for employees. That same year Evans' agency found shortcomings in the worker safety program at the Yucca Mountain Project, the Department of Energy's program to study Yucca Mountain as a possible high-level nuclear waste repository.

Before he became ill, Evans saw his department come out from under the auspices of the federal government to become an independent state agency.

In addition to his brother, Danny Evans is survived by a son, Chad Evans, a daughter, Lori Evans, and his former wife, Linda Evans, all of Henderson; and a sister, Joy Faye Barnes of Duenweg, Mo.

The family requests donations to be made in Danny Evans' memory to the Cancer Society of Las Vegas.