Two Dead After Water Main Break In Boston

A water main break in Boston took the lives of two workers on Friday.

The Boston Globe identified the men as Robert Higgins, 47, and Kelvin Mattocks, 53. They were working underground in a 15-foot-deep trench when the main broke, CBS Boston reported. The men were trapped because the pipe failure flooded the trench, the Associated Press reported.

“The pipe that burst in the trench they were digging ... gushed with such ferocity that the dirt walls had begun to cave in,” The Globe reported.

“As the trench flooded, passersby watched [coworkers] attempt to save their fellow employees but the rushing water was too powerful,” CBS Boston reported.

It remains unclear why the main busted, The Globe reported.  What is known: The men were employed by Atlantic Drain Service Co., which has a history of violating federal worker safety rules.

“The Boston Fire Department says the construction site where two workers were killed ... lacked certain protections,” WBUR reported.

The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) had dubbed the company a "severe" violator, The Globe reported. Ted Fitzgerald, an agency spokesman, told The Globe that the company was in a program for "recalcitrant employers that endanger workers by committing willful, repeat, or failure-to-abate violations."

“I can’t believe this — that this Atlantic Drain Co. was allowed to work in the city anywhere,” said Martin Hewitt, Higgins’s uncle, per The Globe. “I’m not going to let this go.”

The Boston Police, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley’s office, and OSHA are investigating the tragedy, reports said.

Marcy Goldstein-Gelb, the executive director of the Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health, expressed outrage at Atlantic Drain Co.

“To fail repeatedly and to have had fines, and to have failed to pay the fines, and then to be here in 2016 with two families who have tragically lost loved ones?” she said, per The Globe. “It’s just unconscionable.”