By Genevieve Reilly
The Connecticut Post
FAIRFIELD — Charles Ricco found himself perched on the hood of an oncoming car.
Scott Sudora has been clipped by cars numerous times.
Ryan Mignone got hit in the back with a car’s sideview mirror.
All three were just doing their job as police officers -- keeping workers safe and keeping traffic moving as smoothly as possible.
All three were injured on the job.
“It’s harder working a road job than going on patrol,” said Mignone, whose been on the Fairfield police force for about 3 years.
Road jobs are not an unusual sight in Fairfield these days, what with the work by United Illuminating to move power lines underground along the Post Road.
The orange cones that delineate a motorist’s route are commonplace, the jarring from the metal plates covering the road surface are a constant reminder.
“There are at least 10 road jobs on any given day,” Sgt. James Perez said, and the UI work will be going on for a while.
And with some of the utility company construction going on almost round the clock, police cruisers are also parked at those sites, Perez said.
Ricco, going on his 19th year with the department, was working one of the UI jobs on the Post Road when the work first started, back in November of 2006.
“We had set the cone pattern up with the site inspector and we were going over the safety issues and the importance of having the cones at a certain degree and distance,” Ricco said. “I took about five steps and here comes a car that hits two or three cones and is coming into the construction zone, right at me.”
Ricco said he began to back pedal. “I had no choice,” he said, and had to jump on the car’s hood. “She clipped me on the side, traveled about five feet and hit the police car.”
He ended up with injuries to his leg and Achilles’ heel, and though he was hit, Ricco said his body and the police cruiser kept the motorist from going into a very deep trench and crushing construction workers there.
“It is dangerous; they don’t slow down,” Ricco said.
The road is often more narrow than usual when construction is going on.
Ricco and Perez said the orange cones and traffic patterns aren’t simply thrown out on the road at random.
“Where the cones are placed, how high they are, how many are used,” is all regulated by OSHA, Ricco said.
Anyone who travels regularly down Route 1 has most likely driven through several different traffic patterns while the UI work is under way.
The patterns change daily, Perez said, making it even more important that drivers take it slow through the construction zones.
Mignone was finishing up a road job -- paving on Route 59 -- and the workers were packing it in.
“I was inside the cones,” Mignone said. “They were done paving I was already thinking about dinner and going home.”
The traffic was moving in both directions, he said.
“I turned to look at the northbound lane,” Mignone said, and a car heading south “clipped me on my tailbone” with the car’s sideview mirror.
He said he couldn’t believe he’d just gotten hit. “I was shocked,” Mignone said, but was relieved to find his injuries weren’t severe.
“When I first got hit I thought I broke my back,” he said, but only ended up missing a few days of work.
The driver’s excuse was he had to swerve to avoid another car.
But the cops have another reason.
“People drive way too fast through construction zones,” Mignone said.
Sudora is not small in stature by any means. “I’m big and I’m wearing a lime green vest,” he said, and still motorists don’t see them until its almost too late.
“I’ve been hit more than once,” Sudora. “The most recent was on Sasco Hill Road.”
With the road narrowed to about 6 feet, Sudora was letting one lane of traffic through. “A Carvel truck hits me in the back and knocks me down. I was out of work a couple of days.”
His advice sounds like a broken record: “Just slow down. Give yourself some time. Unfortunately everybody’s in a rush.”
Trumbull hasn’t had any officers injured working road jobs that Deputy Chief Mike Harry can recall.
“And that’s a good thing,” Harry said, but officers there still contend with the same difficulties.
“Drivers don’t pay attention and they drive around the cones and barriers and they don’t slow down,” Harry said. Sudora has a reminder for those who don’t slow down and who break traffic laws in a construction zone.
“We’ve given tickets out at the scene, that’s the one thing we can do,” he said.
And thanks to a change in state law, fines issued in a construction zone are twice their usual amount.
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