| The police lieutenant sounded unnerved as he stepped inside the old lumber mill. In the darkened factory, sunlight streamed through jagged holes in the rusted metal walls as Lt. Marc Cutt walked across a machine that turned logs into lumber. “Has it been rendered safe?” Cutt asked another police officer as his body camera recorded the scene. “Safe is a relative term in this place,” the officer responded. Phenix Lumber Co. was the deadliest workplace in America over the past five years. Workers had lost fingers, broken bones and been mangled by machines. A medical examiner’s report detailed how just 23 pounds of one employee was recovered after he was caught in a machine. It had reached the point, some former workers said, that they would pray before the start of their $9-an-hour shifts. Phenix Lumber’s story shows the limits of OSHA’s powers: It cannot shut down companies even after years of repeated violations and penalties, even when workers die. But change was finally coming for Phenix Lumber. It would just have nothing to do with federal safety regulators. | 
