Prince George, B.C.- The Council of Forest Industries,  has set up a task force to examine the dust issues that may have contributed to the fatal explosions at the Lakeland and Babine Forest Products mills.

COFI President, John Allan says a number of forest industry companies CEO’s gathered yesterday to talk about   formalizing  a task force . “We have all acknowledged this is our number one priority” says Allan, “Out of that meeting came the formation of this Task Force which is going to be under my direction, to come up with as much information as we can ranging from research to comparisons of best practices at saw mills to get on top of this dust issue.” Allan says it will be some time before WorkSafeBC pin points the cause of the two explosions, “We acknowledge WorkSafe BC has not determined the cause of the explosions at Babine and Lakeland, but dust has been ‘fingered’ , if I can put it that way, as a potential cause of the explosions. So they( the task force) are going to focus on dust.”

Allan says while the WorkSafeBC orders for dust clean up were issued last week to more than 300 facilities throughout the province, the task force represents companies which account for  50 – 60 mills which produce about 60% of lumber production in B.C.“What we want to do is communicate out findings to all the facilities in B.C. so that the whole industry can tackle this problem in the most efficient and effective way possible and at the same time, we’ll be working with our researchers to do some tests on the dust.”

Allan says the companies want to show some leadership on this issue, “Our employees are of great concern, we want to assure everyone we are taking   all the steps possible we can take to get on top of this issue.”

Allan says the work on dust mitigation started last year, “We had a loose working group on these issues, and it ramped up after the Burns Lake blast. We formalized it ( the working group) yesterday and put  a bit of structure in place.”

The next steps, which are underway now, will see the working group put a work plan in place and development of a budget. “All of these companies have safety people on staff, and its more a matter of getting more organized and more focused than we have been  in the past. So basically, it had started in an informal basis some time ago and as of yesterday, we have formalized it and we’re on our way.”

The informal group that had existed  before wasn’t focusing on any one issue in the past, rather safety in general says Allan. “Dust has always been an issue, but not to the extent that we now perhaps understand that it potentially led to these tragedies.”

Allan cannot say how long it may be before the new Task force has some answers “We are working on this as a number one priority, the WorkSafe investigation will shed some light on this situation, but I don’t think that’s going to be over for some months yet. We’re going to get at it, and do this work as fast as we can.”