Skanska Sued Over Economic Devastation Due To Company's Failures During Hurricane Sally

Via Watching The Hawks: Skanska, a construction industry giant that is making waves for all the wrong reasons, after construction barges, carrying cranes, beams, and other equipment broke free during hurricane Sally causing damage and leaving the Pensacola Bay bridge out of service for months. Mike Papantonio joins Watching The Hawks to explain why locals are holding Skanska accountable.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Infrastructure and construction projects keep America going. But the companies that make it possible rarely make headlines, but that all recently changed with Skanska, a construction industry giant that is making waves for all the wrong reasons. 23 Skanska construction barges, carrying cranes, beams, and other equipment broke free during hurricane Sally. This caused major devastation across Escambia and Santa Rosa counties. And while thankfully no injuries were reported, the barges caused damage leaving the Pensacola Bay bridge out of service for six months. Locals are holding Skanska accountable because they are upset that the company hasn't been open about their role in the disaster, nor had they done much to remedy the effected parties. This is notable because Skanska makes big money in the US, $2.7 billion in commercial and multifamily projects. The company built structures like the world trade center, MetLife stadium, where the New York giants and jets play, as well as several airports, hospitals, and other structures. But Skanska also has a long history of problematic mistakes and some are deadly. The company has been charged with fraudulent labor practices, bribery, bribery scandals, and black contractors filed racially motivated harassment claims against them. In Florida, local businesses want Skanska to pay up. Revenue losses resulted from the bridge outing and claims of Skanska not following hurricane protocol have erupted. Here for more on this developing story is Mike Papantonio, host of America's Lawyer. Welcome Mike.

Well, thank you. Appreciate it. Yeah. I think you, you know, as I listened to you all open the program, I thought it was interesting, the story about the Pentagon was so interesting because it it's, it's kind of a macro of what we're talking about here in a more of a micro story. And that is accountability. Who's, who is watching the people who are making decisions about things like the Pentagon and, and with America's Lawyer, we've been trying to analyze, what's, what's happening with the new infrastructure build out. Okay. We, we have, we have a lot of infrastructure build-out taking place all over the country in various places, but what we're not doing is we're not really looking. We, we, it's almost like we've abandoned our responsibility to say, let me show up at the hearing that we're going to have with a company like Skanska, where they says, where they say, we're the people that are going to improve your infrastructure.

We're going to build a $400 million bridge and you can count on us. And what we, what we've, we've analyzed this ad nauseum we've, we've taken a look at, you know, mass protests taking place in the streets, individuals going state to state on big national issues. But we've forgotten about what's happening in our backyard. This, this, this act of forgetting what's happening in our backyard probably will cost this, this community, billions of economic loss. And as you pointed out, this was a company it's a foreign company that shows up in Pensacola. They make a presentation to city council that are half asleep on what's going on and state, you know, state legislators who were completely out of the ball game. Politicians who care about how much money they can give me. The media barely paying attention to it.

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