WILLIAMSTOWN, W.Va. – It was a warm and sunny Thursday in Wood County. Randy Bland, a crew supervisor with the West Virginia Division of Highways, was setting up traffic cones with his work crew on US 50, preparing to patch potholes.
“On June 11, 2015, I received a call from my brother Randy Bland’s phone,” recalled David Bland, Randy Bland’s brother. “When I answered the phone, the voice on the other end wasn’t Randy’s.”
Instead, it was a friend. He told David Bland his brother had been in a work zone accident. He told David he needed to get to the hospital. Fast.
“I got ahold of the family, and we made it to the hospital,” David Bland recalled. “We kept asking if we could see him at the hospital and they kept saying that we could see him after they got his bleeding under control. While waiting, someone from the hospital just came out and said that he didn’t make it.
“And this was the saddest moment of my life, and many others,” David Bland said. “That moment has changed the lives of his children, his wife, his mother, his brother, his grandchildren, his nieces and nephews, and many other family members and friends.”
Over the years, 58 WVDOH workers have been killed in the line of duty. David Bland remembered his brother at a memorial service Friday, April 24, 2026, at the WVDOH Fallen Worker Memorial in Williamstown.
The statue atop the memorial is cast in Randy Bland’s likeness.
“I was there the day the accident happened in June,” remembered WVDOH District 3 Manager Mike Daley, who was district safety officer at the time. “Randy was a great, great friend.
“It’s terrible that we’ve had to deal with losing lives because of somebody else’s ignorance.”
David Bland wants drivers to pay attention in work zones, so what happened to his brother doesn’t happen to other families.
“I want to remind everybody here to embrace your family every day,” he said. “You never know when it’ll be the last time you will see them.
“That one day and that one accident changed the lives of so many people because of one person’s decisions to drive through a construction zone,” David Bland said. “So please, when you’re driving through construction, slow down, get off the phone, pay attention to the workers out there. They’re out there in the heat and the cold and the rain and the sunshine, working hard so that you can travel on the roads.”
With work continuing in all 55 counties across the state, the West Virginia Division of Highways and the West Virginia Department of Transportation remind the public of the importance of keeping everyone safe in work zones. “Safe actions save lives!”
For more information, visit the West Virginia Department of Transportation.
