Notre Dame: No one disregarded safety in Long Grove student's death

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — An internal University of Notre Dame investigation states school officials had outdated information making them unaware of dangerous wind conditions on the day Declan Sullivan, a student videographer from Long Grove, fell to his death while recording football practice.

That conflicts with findings from an Indiana Department of Labor inquiry, which determined the Notre Dame staff knew of wind gusts exceeding 30 mph when Sullivan went atop a hydraulic scissor lift at the university's practice field.

The state fined Notre Dame $77,500 after determining the school was negligent in Sullivan's death.

“Although the university respects IOSHA's view, the investigation did not find any evidence that university employees knew they were using lifts in wind speeds which exceeded lift capabilities,” said Notre Dame's report, released Monday.

The lift carrying the 20-year-old junior film student was toppled by high winds during football practice Oct. 27.

Notre Dame's report states football staffers were working with outdated weather data and did not believe the winds were dangerous when deciding to practice outdoors and send Sullivan atop the lift to record the session.

“According to interviews, no one perceived the wind as unusual, and no one discerned that wind speeds were increasing in severity during practice,” the university's report states.

Consequently, no further precautions were taken with regard to the lifts.

The university assigned part of the blame for the accident with officials not having updated, real-time information on wind conditions. Some of the information available that day, taken from the National Weather Service and weather.com, could have been as much as an hour old.

The report found that staffers checked conditions eight times before the accident but did not check for wind advisories that had been issued that day.

“(Advisories) were not on the website, not on the website that our videographers, that our staff, accessed,” said John Affleck-Graves, the university's executive vice president. “There was an icon that you could have clicked, which would have taken you to the advisory.”

University President the Rev. John I. Jenkins acknowledged Notre Dame had “failed to keep Declan safe,” but he added the investigation showed no one at the school acted with a disregard for safety. He said the school would concentrate, at the request of Sullivan's parents, to ensure accidents like this don't happen in the future.

“Nothing we can do can restore Declan to his family and this community,” Jenkins said.

Notre Dame head football coach Brian Kelly made the decision to hold practice, “based on common sense,” the report states. He chose to practice despite the windy conditions, which saw a gust recorded at 52 mph, though the staff was not aware that winds had exceeded the school's self-imposed 35 mph limit for using the lifts because they did not continuously check conditions during practice.

“Had the staff accessed real-time weather information during practice, they would have learned that wind gusts exceeded the internal 35 mph wind limit and would have grounded the lifts,” the report states.

While recording practice Oct. 27, Sullivan expressed concern via Twitter about the danger he faced atop the lift raised 35 feet above ground.

“This is terrifying,” he posted at one point.

Two other paid videographers working that day were among the more than 50 people interviewed for Notre Dame's investigation. The report stated the videographers believed Sullivan wasn't being serious and “that the tweets likely reflected his joking nature.”

The report also said the school's video director, Tim Collins, worked under the impression that Sullivan could lower the lift and get down if he thought conditions were too dangerous.

Kelly was asked Monday what he had learned from the tragedy.

“Unfortunately, anytime there is a death associated with your workings on a day-to-day basis, it profoundly affects you personally. Because we had a personal relationship with Declan, you're never quite the same,” Kelly said.

Jenkins would not disclose whether any discipline was taken against employees in the accident's aftermath, and instead said the school would collectively take responsibility.

Sullivan's family saw several versions of the report before its release, said his uncle, Mike Miley. Sullivan's parents, Barry and Alison, are pleased the school has revised policies to ensure the tragedy isn't repeated, he added.

When it came to staff discipline, or if Notre Dame should have fired anyone, the family doesn't see the point.

“From the family's perspective, nothing will affect or change the outcome for us,” Miley said. “I've lost a nephew ... they've lost a son.”

According to the university, four factors caused the accident: a burst of wind, staff's lack of knowledge, the lift's vulnerability to tipping and the height at which it was raised at the time of the collapse.

There were two other lifts employed on the day of the accident, when the National Weather Service reported winds gusting more than 50 mph in nearby South Bend. Sullivan was on a different model lift from the other two, and his was more prone to tipping over under those weather conditions, Affleck-Graves said.

Notre Dame officials cited the Indiana state report as a useful resource in its internal probe, but the school's findings differed from the state's on whether Notre Dame officials knew the winds posed danger.

Indiana Occupational Safety and Health Administration spokeswoman Stephanie McFarland said Notre Dame's report has no bearing on her agency's findings.

“These are professional experts in industrial health and safety experts that went out and did a very thorough investigation in nearly five months,” she said about her agency's report.

The state investigation also found that the school improperly maintained equipment and trained the staff on how to use the scissor lifts. The lift's manufacturer warned against using the equipment in winds greater than 28 mph, according to the IOSHA, but Sullivan was suspended 35 feet in the air in winds that had reached more than 50 mph that day.

Notre Dame has until mid-June to appeal the findings or pay the fine. School officials did not comment on when that would happen.