Airport ramps are busy places.
Planes need to get in and out of gates.
Schedules need to be kept. Airplanes
need fuel, passengers need food,
and then there's baggage. Lots and lots
of baggage. Ground vehicles don't sit for
very long. Now you're about to
see a collision on the ground.
It was April 2nd, 2021.
Two tugs collide,
the one on the left and electric
tug driven by Aaliyah pain.
I feel like there's kind of like not
a day where I don't cry about it.
It's still really emotional to me,
it's just something big that happened and
I'm still learning to like live with it.
When the two dogs came together,
Payne says her left foot flew
out of the side of the tug,
which did not have a door and was
crushed in between the vehicles pain
and her attorney provided us with
these photos taken at Harborview.
We can't show them to you clearly
because they are very graphic,
but they do show missing toes,
exposed bone and torn skin.
After a month doctors were
not able to save it.
I was hoping that I would recover
and that I would be able to walk
again and I'd be mobile and I would
still have my foot and everything
but the unfortunate outcome was
that I had to have an amputation.
The amputation took part of my
leg as well as my foot with it so.
It wasn't just the crush injury.
I think that it's a lot harder
than I thought it was going to be.
I didn't expect this outcome at all. This
is a log of 321 incidents
reported last year at Seatac.
Pains was the only one classified
as a major injury defined as
anything involving hospitalization,
loss of life, limb and eyesight.
12 injuries were classified as intermediate,
meaning any injury that requires
transport such as an ambulance,
to a hospital.
29 are mine are defined as
anything that did not require
being transported from the scene.
These collisions.
These results don't have to
happen to workers at the airport.
Furthermore, these collisions
don't have to endanger the public
that are using the airport.
Ray Bishop is Alia Payne's
attorney she's filing suit.
Primarily at the Port of Seattle
that owns and runs the airport.
The crash that caused pain to lose
her foot occurred while driving
around a curve created by a Jersey
barrier designed to separate
construction work on the New North
satellite from other airport activity,
a chain link fence sat atop the Jersey
barrier covered by a blue tarp.
That
corner was really, really blind.
I didn't see anybody until the last moment.
The way I reacted was the only way I could
react because it was completely blind like.
You just see the blue tarp and that's it.
There was only one lane
marked in paint on the ramp.
The port says it was space limited
in these pictures provided
by her attorney.
The TARP has by this time been
taken down and stop signs put up.
Because this case involves litigation.
The Port of Seattle declined our
invitation for an on camera interview,
but they did provide information.
They now have a full time person
dedicated to safety assurance
on the ramp at the airport.
And have other employees keeping
tabs on other companies on
the ramp to make sure things
are carried out safely.
Seatac
provided this chart showing
where incidents spiked in 2018.
The red line toward the bottom is
the number of major or intermediate
accidents per 100,000 takeoffs
and landings at the airport.
The numbers have dropped somewhat from
19 per 100,000 to less than 17 in 2021.
The upward yellow line is the
number of cases that are reported.
Which report says it is encouraging.
Our lawsuit is principally
against the Port of Seattle,
the Port of Seattle is supposed to
have a non delegable duty to ensure
the safety of everyone at the airport.
Workers like Aaliyah and passengers alike,
but Ray Bishop is fighting a bigger
battle saying the port just can't shift
the liability for these accidents onto
airlines and ground service companies.
He argued that in another tug accident
where the driver was severely injured,
taking the case to the
state Supreme Court twice.
The port says tugs are required to
be mechanically limited to how fast
they can go, such as 12 to
13 mph. As part of his investigation,
Bishop alleges that Ugh, that collided
with Alia pain was going closer to 16.
That vehicle should not have
been on the port that day,
for alia pain. It's been a
hard year with no end insight.
It's kind of a roller coaster.
It goes back and forth.
Grief is not a straight line.
You know, I'm grieving the loss of my limb.
I'm grieving the loss of.
My past self of who I used to be in.
My old potential that I used to have
and I'm grieving all of that still,
and it's not gonna just be one
day I'm good and I'm gonna be good
from here on out it's one day I'll
be OK in the next day I'm crying
because I don't know what to do.
At CEATEC, Glenn Farley King 5 News.