Prince George, B.C. – The explosion and ensuing fire that claimed two lives and injured 19 others while destroying the Babine Forest Products sawmill in Burns Lake is believed to be one of the most significant industrial workplace incidents in the province’s history.

"This is an incident where dozens of workers could have been injured or killed," says WorkSafeBC’s Donna Freeman. "It’s a huge tragedy for the community, for the families, ecetera. The potential for lost lives is frightening."

A report compiled for the Centre for the Study of Living Standards in Ottawa in 2005, titled "Five Deaths a Day: Workplace Fatalities in Canada, 1993-2005", found the primary resources sectors continue to be the most dangerous. "Over the 1996-2005 period, occupations unique to primary occupations had the highest fatality rate at 19.5 per 100,000 workers, followed by trades, transport and equipment operators and related occupations (19.0 per 100,000 workers), and occupations unique to processing, manufacturing and utilities (10.2). All other major group occupations had a fatality rate less than 4 per 100,000."

Despite Northern BC’s heavy reliance on these sectors, incidents of this magnitude are rare.  In 1999, a series of explosions at a natural gas processing plant in Taylor injured 14 people – plant personnel and firefighters inside at the time, but there were, fortunately, no lives lost. The entire community of 1300 had to be evacuated to nearby Fort St. John until the situation could be brought under control.

An underground explosion at a gold mine project north of Stewart in frigid temperatures killed two men and injured two others in February of 1989. And tragedy struck the Granduc Copper Mine near the BC/Alaska border on the morning of February 18, 1965 when an avalanche swept silently down a mountain, killing 26 men in the mining camp below.