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Sure, the new Marlins Stadium is a taxpayer-draining succubus approved through wholesale lies and deceit — but is the retractable-roofed ballpark also unsafe? That’s what a whistleblowing former contractor says today, with the ominous warning: “I won’t go to that stadium. I won’t take my kids to that place.”
The complaints are serious enough that Miami-Dade’s Inspector General launched a probe last month into welding at the park, asking for proof that all the metal joints had been reinspected.
The complaints were uncovered by CBS4’s Jim DeFede, who interviews Roy Fastabend, a former welding inspection contractor at the park.
Fastabend says he saw contractors routinely cutting corners at the stadium, and that he was fired after eventually calling out another inspector named Mike Garcia for allegedly approving un-inspected welds.
“If people knew what was going on there or how they did things, I mean, I won’t go to that stadium,” he tells DeFede.
After Fastabend’s complaints, Dade’s inspector general, Chris Mazzella, sent the Marlins a letter asking reams of questions about inspections on the ballpark’s welding, The Miami Herald reports.
Mazzella’s probe apparently led to a number of joints being redone or replaced after new inspections. City officials now insist the retractable roof is safe, telling the Herald the problems were “resolved.”
But Fastabend, for one, remains unconvinced. “Sadly, it looks beautiful, but there are questions,” he says.
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