news-record.com

DURHAM -- The family of a master steamfitter killed last year at Duke University when a steam pipe ruptured at the Levine Science Research Center filed suit this week in federal court, seeking funeral expenses and other financial damages from Duke.

Rayford "Wiley" Cofer died May 14, 2008, while adjusting a steam valve in the basement of the animal lab building after co-workers on an upper floor worked on a gasket.

Cofer, an employee at Duke since 2000, had opened a valve in the basement of the building "about four turns," according to the lawsuit, "approximately one inch," when a water hammer erupted.

Steam and hot splashes of water filled the room. "The heat was so intense," the lawsuit said, "that credit cards inside 1/8Cofer's3/8 wallet and other personal belongings on his body melted."

Water in the basement hallway was so hot it burned through the boots of a co-worker who tried to rescue Cofer.

After temperatures cooled enough for rescue workers to get into the equipment room, they found Cofer's lifeless body about 5 feet from the door, face up with his arms pointed in front of him, straight in the air, the lawsuit said.

''A fireman at the scene described him as 'frozen in time,'" the lawsuit said.

In the 34-page complaint, Suzanne Cofer, the widow, accuses Duke of knowingly operating a "defective and inherently dangerous steam system." The suit alleges that Cofer and others at Duke had complained about system problems for years, but the university refused to spend the money required to make it better.

The complaint says Duke refused to turn the steam system off for any extensive time because "any shutdown for more than 24 hours" was too inconvenient and costly for a major university, and specifically, a "state of the art" research facility that was contained inside the Life Science Research Center building.

Duke administrators dispute claims that the university hid important information and caused the accident. They plan to fight the suit.

''Ray Cofer's death was a tragedy for the Duke community, and we join his family and friends in their grief," Michael Schoenfeld, vice president for public affairs and government relations, said in a prepared statement. "We now understand that his death was an accident that Duke itself could not have wholly prevented."