A bombshell new report reveals that Joe Lombardo’s administration dropped serious safety violations and fines against Elon Musk’s Boring Company after Clark County firefighters suffered chemical burns and permanent scarring in a Boring Company tunnel — and then tried to cover up his shady dealings.
In addition to the firefighters’ injuries, employees at Musk’s company in Las Vegas were subjected to “chilling” safety violations including a worker’s pelvis getting “crushed” and another employee “shocked by an electrical panel.” The toxic muck fluid in the tunnels caused employees’ skin to peel off and suffer from chemical burns — but after a quick call and meeting with Lombardo’s office, the violations quickly went away.
Lombardo’s office even tried to cover up this backdoor deal with Musk, deleting records of the Governor’s office meeting with Musk’s company and refusing to provide an explanation for revoking the citations.
Former Nevada regulators, including Republican appointees, slammed Lombardo’s office for politicizing Nevada’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration and putting Nevadans’ health and safety at risk, saying “it’s absolutely not appropriate.”
Nevada State Democratic Party spokesperson Kate Sosland:
“As Nevadans suffered from chemical burns, broken bones, and electric shocks, Joe Lombardo’s office made backroom deals instead of holding Elon Musk and his company responsible for these egregious safety violations — and then tried to cover up the evidence. Lombardo is nothing but a con artist who is selling out Nevadans’ safety to serve powerful billionaires like Musk and protect his own political interests.”
Read more below:
Fortune: After Elon Musk’s Boring Co. was cited for serious safety violations, the Nevada governor’s office stepped in. Then someone deleted evidence of that meeting
- On May 28, hours after Nevada’s workplace safety agency served notice of more than $400,000 in fines to Elon Musk’s $5.6 billion tunneling startup the Boring Company, the phone rang at Nevada governor Joe Lombardo’s office.
- Boring Co. president Steve Davis was on the line. Boring Company was challenging citations from Nevada’s workplace safety regulator blaming it for chemical burns two firefighters had suffered in its tunnels during a training exercise.
- By the next afternoon, a group of high-ranking state officials, including the governor’s state infrastructure coordinator who took the call, were convened in a room with Davis, who was himself wrapping up a stint in Washington D.C. helping Musk run the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). At the beginning of that meeting, the citations and fines—among the agency’s largest in a decade and a potential threat to Boring’s plans to build tunnels in other U.S. cities—were summarily rescinded.
- Soon, something else disappeared: The record of the Governor’s office meeting with Musk’s company was removed from a public document without explanation. More irregularities in the case file occurred: Documents weren’t saved to the file, and a document intended to provide reasoning for revoking the citations was left out.
- Four lawyers and former Nevada regulators, however, say this level of political involvement in an OSHA investigation is not only highly unusual, but goes against procedure. “It’s absolutely not appropriate,” said Jess Lankford, who oversaw Nevada OSHA until 2021. The agency is supposed to have the political independence to call “balls and strikes” as it sees fit, says Terry Johnson, an adjunct professor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas who previously served as the director of the department that sits above OSHA.
- A worker’s pelvis was crushed in September; a different employee was shocked by an electrical panel this summer; and the harsh chemicals that burned the firefighters, part of a toxic muck fluid that pools in the tunnels, remain an ever-present danger for Boring workers, according to five current and former employees at the Boring Company, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared retribution.
- One former employee described how workers would often kneel in the muck, not even realizing they were being burned until it was happening. “They go to peel off their sock,” they said, “And a big old chunk of skin comes off.”
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