Make a call, save a life?

IF THERE'S a God, there will be criminal convictions for those responsible for the deaths of Anne Bryan, Roseline Conteh, Borbor Davis, Kim Finnegan, Juanita Harmin and Mary Lea Simpson.

But these six victims - let's call them the Campbell Six, named for the company that botched the building demolition that killed them - are owed more than legal justice. We owe it to them to find an easy way for bystanders to report dangerous work sites to the right people.

New York City has already found it for us.

For the past year, the city has been piloting a program that requires contractors to post signs (photo at right) at work sites that make it simple for passers-by to know, in seconds, the basics of the work being done.

The signs are headlined, simply, "What's Going On Here?" Underneath is the name of the project and contractor, the estimated completion date and - most importantly - a line that reads, "If you see an unsafe condition at this site, please dial 311."

It's as if New York has recognized that its building inspectors can't be everywhere at once, but observant passers-by just might be. By giving civilians a simple way to send up a flare when something doesn't look right, the city can intervene before a tragedy.

The travesty of the Salvation Army thrift-store collapse is that the demolition that caused it had set off clanging alarm bells among onlookers for weeks. Everyone knew something was seriously messed up about the way workers were tearing down the four-story building next to it.

Witnesses saw workers swinging sledgehammers late at night, without lights. An excavator biting into the front of the building, pulling debris onto a sidewalk that hadn't been closed to pedestrians. Workers doing dangerous work without hard hats and other protective gear.

You didn't have to be a genius to know that something awful could happen. But you apparently had to be a paper-chasing technocrat to report it.

On May 6, a Center City resident named Stephen Field emailed the city's 3-1-1 website to complain about the demo site's unsafe-looking conditions. In response, he was asked to a) provide the "legal address" of the property, b) describe the type of work being done and c) the time of day and/or day of the week it was being done, d) determine whether a "valid" permit was visible and e) learn who was doing the work.

Someone tell me: How would an ordinary citizen find the "legal address" on a wide construction site comprised of individual tracts no longer sporting individual property numbers? Or determine whether a permit was "valid"? Or learn the name of the company doing the work without first tracking down the (valid) permit to see who it had been given to?

Indeed, conflicting property numbers discussed in the email back-and-forth between Field and 3-1-1 appeared to be the reason that no one from Licenses and Inspections thought to look at the entire site when the agency determined, on May 14, that no violations had occurred.

Which sounds bogus to anyone with two eyes. But, for the sake of argument, let's say that no violations were apparent to the inspector that day.

Maybe, though, they would've been apparent on subsequent days, if enough people had an easy way to report them so L&I knew to make subsequent visits. Instead, L&I has maintained that the agency received only one complaint - from Field.

Since the collapse, everyone has been asking, "If so many people knew something was wrong, why did no one say anything?"

Maybe because there was no straightforward way to do it.

The beauty of the New York City sign system is that a passer-by can whip out a cellphone, right in front of the site, call 3-1-1 and then read off the information printed clearly on the poster.

Snap. Done.

We should be able to do something similar here. Because this stuff isn't rocket science, as anyone in the trucking industry can tell you.

By now, we've all seen signs on the back of rigs big and small that read "HOW IS MY DRIVING?" followed by a toll-free number to call when we see a truck bobbing or weaving. If a company gets enough calls about a crazy driver, odds are he won't be menacing the public much longer.

After what happened on Market Street, it's a good bet Campbell Construction won't be menacing the public any more, either.

It's a horror that the Campbell Six had to die to put him out of business.

A bunch of phone calls might have accomplished the same end.

Phone: 215-854-2217

On Twitter: @RonniePhilly

Blog: ph.ly/RonnieBlog