Thursday, June 11, 2015, was a warm and sunny day in Wood County. Randy Bland, a crew supervisor with the West Virginia Division of Highways (WVDOH), was setting up traffic cones with his work crew on US 50, preparing to patch potholes.
Bland would not make it home to his family that night. At about 11 a.m., a truck hauling water slammed into the back of a van in the work zone. The van plowed into Bland, carrying him about 50 feet before crashing into Bland’s work truck, crushing the crew supervisor between the two vehicles.
Mike Daley, district manager for WVDOH District 3 where the accident occurred, was district safety officer at the time. Within minutes he was on scene as paramedics fought to save Bland’s life.
Daley is also a trained EMT. Instinctively, he jumped into the ambulance to help in any way he could. He may well have been the last person to speak to Bland.
“He looked up at me and said, ‘I’m not doing too good, am I?’” Daley recalled.
Despite Daley’s reassurances that he would be okay, Bland apparently knew otherwise.
“He said, ‘Please make sure my family is taken care of,’” Daley remembered. “And that was it.”
Bland was rushed to the hospital, but died a short time later.
Bland’s death hit District 3 hard.
“We wanted to do something to memorialize that loss and show that we cared for Randy,” said Jacob Bumgarner, P.E., WVDOH state highway engineer. “We wanted to be able to show that.”
Bumgarner, who was District 3 maintenance engineer at the time of the accident, said a committee was formed to plan a memorial for Bland. Along the way, they discovered that, unlike other states, West Virginia did not have a statewide memorial to commemorate highways workers who had lost their lives in the line of duty. The idea was born to build a state Fallen Workers Memorial in Williamstown.
“We thought it would be a good way to humanize and put a name with those incidents,” Bumgarner recalled. In memory of Randy Bland, the bronze-colored statue that graces the workers memorial is cast in Bland’s image.
Monday, April 21, 2025, through Friday, April 25, 2025, is National Work Zone Awareness Week, a time to stress the importance of paying attention in work zones, and to draw attention to the tragic consequences of failing to heed work zone restrictions. Every year during that week, the WVDOH holds a memorial ceremony at the Fallen Workers Memorial to remember the 58 workers who have died on the job over the years.
“I never ever want to experience that again,” Bumgarner said at this year’s memorial service, held on Thursday, April 24, 2025. “That was the basis for this memorial.”
“Work zone safety should be a lifestyle,” Bumgarner said. “It should be something that is in our minds every day
“Please, please think about what you’re doing when you’re driving,” Bumgarner said. “Pay attention. Make sure you get through work zones safely every day.”
