Deaths, injuries prompt lift truck owners to hire trainers. (Focus: Construction & Energy)

Lift truck training has been the law for 20 years, but often is not enforced

EVERADO RANGEL-JASSO, a 16-year-old Troutdale youth, died after a forklift truck he was driving at Denton Plastics Inc. in Portland flipped over and crushed his chest. Co-workers say Rangel-Jasso may have turned the forklift too sharply when he was backing up with a load.

At Steinfeld's Products Co. in North Portland, a trailer truck backed into a forklift driven by Glendon Sundstrom, a 66-year-old St. Helens man. The lift truck rolled over, killing Sundstrom.

On Christmas Eve 1991, longshoreman Patrick John Fortner drove a forklift off the end of the loading dock at Jones Oregon Stevedoring Co. in Portland. He was pinned beneath the massive machine. A Life Flight helicopter took the 25-year-old Fortner to University Hospital, but he didn't survive.

In a typical year, lift truck accidents kill several workers in the Portland area. Lyle Soots and Jim Foley, with Hyster Sales Co.'s lift truck driver training program, say they know of at least three fatal accidents in the metropolitan area over the last 18 months. That death toll is typical, they …