Weaverville Zips car wash receives 'serious violations' after employee entrapment death

ASHEVILLE - The North Carolina Department of Labor cited Zips Car Wash LLC with a “willful serious” violation along with three other violations on July 12 following the death of a Weaverville employee in January.

Carolina Brea Franks, 26, of Weaverville, was pronounced dead on Jan. 14 by Buncombe County EMS after she “apparently (became) entrapped in equipment located within the car wash,” the Citizen Times previously reported. After her death, N.C. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Division launched an inspection of the Weaverville car wash on Jan. 13 and 14, according to citation records obtained by the Citizen Times.

The citations state the employee, Franks, “was cleaning equipment inside the car wash tunnel and became entangled in the moving equipment, resulting in fatal injuries.”

From the inspection, N.C. OSH cited Zips with a “willful serious” violation for not utilizing energy control procedures to “control electrical, hydraulic and pneumatic energy sources” where employees perform maintenance tasks, like cleaning the equipment.

Zips also received two violations considered serious by OSH. One is for failing to maintain safe working surfaces. Specifically, two sections of the trench grating in the car wash tunnel were damaged, creating a fall hazard for employees working in or passing through the area.

Previous reporting: Weaverville woman killed at Zips Car Wash; caught in equipment: Police

The second serious violation is for not training authorized employees on how to isolate and control “hazardous energy sources” where maintenance tasks are performed. A third nonserious citation was issued against Zips for not securing a cable running from a high-pressure sprayer controller to an electrical box.

All the violations add up to a total penalty of nearly $186,000 and require immediate action to abate the issues, the citations said.

"They should be held accountable because I lost my granddaughter because of their negligence or whatever," Ernestine Franks, Carolina Franks' paternal grandmother, told the Citizen Times July 22. "They need to be accountable, so it doesn't happen to anybody else."

"She thought of other people more than she thought of herself," Franks said of her granddaughter. "If she could help other people that'd make her happy."

The company has 15 days after receiving the citations to request an informal conference with the Labor Department, file a notice of contest with the OSH Review Commission, or to pay the penalty, according to an email from DOL spokesperson Erin Wilson.

“The penalties are in no way designed to make up for the loss of life,” the email said.

“By law, the civil money penalties collected by the N.C. Department of Labor are not receipts of the department, but rather must be remitted to the Civil Penalty and Forfeiture Fund, which then distributes the monies to the public school system.”

Zips spokesperson Sarah Elizabeth Falanga said the company has not yet received the OSH report.

"We continue to be deeply saddened by loss of this extraordinarily valuable member of our team, Carolina Brea Franks," Falanga wrote in a statement July 22 to the Citizen Times.

Franks, who’s known as “Brea” to her family, wasn’t supposed to work at the car wash that day, but filled in when someone canceled their shift last minute, the Citizen Times previously reported.

"She did not have an enemy in this world," Franks previously said about Brea, whom she helped raise. "She had good friends, and she would help you anyway that she could. She's just a good person. She loved people."

This story will be updated.

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Ryley Ober is the Public Safety Reporter for Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA Today Network. Email her at rober@gannett.com and follow her on Twitter @ryleyober

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Weaverville Zips car wash cited for violations after employee death