I wonder if anyone else out there is wondering the same as I am – why on earth were ALL of those not requirements prior to the incident????

Not only that, but do we have to wait for additional similar incidents or even less severe incidents before we get a review of ALL safety standards regulated by the BC Safety Authority?

Dust was already in the electrical code it just didn’t say wood dust. The code was/ is already there but it is too expensive to follow for hazardous locations when it comes to sawmills. Now that people have died someone has to do something so that they can sleep at night. How many less severe incidents took place and went unreported or the management of the day decides to sweep it under the carpet? It’s all about money not safety!

One of the issues facing every operation that has dust is the cost involved its all fine and dandy to say well spend the money but doing it is another thing. Many operations are using conveyor belts to move chips, wood, pellets and other products that produce dust and every operation is different and produces a different type of dust.

Sawmills use generally relatively fresh wood and the dust produced tends to be fine and laden with moisture.
Pulpmills generally use aged chips and wood that when dust is produced tends to be fluffy and dry with less moisture.
Pellet plants use aged and dried chips that produce a dry fine dust

All three of these produce lots of dust yet all 3 produce different types of dust and therefore exhibit different fire and explosion risks and all 3 require different methods of dust abatement controls. Henceforth it’s not cut and dried with worksafe to put a blanket policy in place for dust abatement and control. Then you factor in the costs involved many operations are using older but reliable equipment to do the job and when it comes to cost of updating or even fixing existing systems the base cost in easily in the 2 to 3 million dollar mark.

So say for large operations like West Fraser and Canfor the cost can be absorbed but smaller operations it can literally put them out of business and that there has a ripple effect in itself.

Yes things are happening now and for the better but at what economic cost

It’s all about money alright. Money for another bureaucracy that will do absolutely nothing useful whatsoever towards preventing those kinds of accidents. Money for all the time industry wastes ‘documenting’ all the things industry is already doing. Where does it end? Who in their right mind would ever want to be in any business that provides employment in this Province today? It’s hopeless.

“smaller operations it can literally put them out of business”

I guess we can say it did ……. in the case of two at least in this areas recently …

We must not forget the plywood plant. I realize it was a different cause there, but should not have happened.

Then there have been a few fires at the pellet plant for the same reason even though it did not have the same major effect perhaps because the space was not as confined.

It is totally hopeless. This safety stuff can really get to a person after a while. Just get everyone to sign a waiver that they understand that they work in an unsafe environment and are willing to take the risk,

I mean the safety committees are all a bunch of crap. Right?

Right. They are created to provide the illusions that management cares about safety and that something meaningful is being done to ensure workers’ safety. This has been my experience, anyway.

“Safety first unless it interferes with production.”

The real question about the cost is whether running a safer operation is cheaper than running an unsafe operation.

Anyone have any evidence either way?

The common wisdom is “safety pays” in many ways. I do believe if you do not know what you are doing you are likely to get bit in the butt eventually and along the way you are likely dropping a lot of dough in places you do not even realize.

Compared to when I first started in the industry 17 yrs ago to now the difference in dust abatement is noticeable 17 yrs ago it took a crew of 5 to just keep the piles of dust, fines and chips under control and in a 12 hr shift an area you cleaned 2 hrs earlier looked as if it had never been done

Now today with improvements and new systems in place what took a crew of 5 to do in 12 hrs now only takes 2 people to do and conditions have vastly improved as well. However that being said everytime an area is found as a problem area and fixed a new problem area arises and all you do is chase your tail around.

Every operation that has dust will invariably have a fire and that is a reality but with the ERC crews at most operations are well trained and few ever get out of control. Even that has improved we used to have a fire a week now we have one every couple of months and most operations are the same with their fires.

As to the safety aspect it has gotten much better but again there is such a thing as being too safe and that has caused endless issues for us in the industry. It does become ridiculous at all the safety protocols in place now.

Good info and post. Thanks for that Dearth.

Running a ‘safe’ operation is ALWAYS cheaper, Gus. It doesn’t have to be ‘documented’, anyone with a lick of common sense can see that.

You may not realise it, but even though the two mills that burned were insured, future insurance policies will now have exclusions in them that will force industry to rectify dust-related potentials for loss. Mills simply won’t be covered if accidents of that nature occur.

And without insurance coverage mills will be unable to obtain bank credit to operate or expand. You could go back in history and see how the evolution of insurance mandated dust control has progressed, from the days of timber framed wooden mill buildings when the interior had to be whitewashed, through the necessity for a sprinkler system, usually only seasonally effective, to all metal buildings fully sprinklered with a ‘dry’, all season system, right up to today, where expanded measures to control dust build up will be an essential to maintain coverage.

So what is the sense in adding one more layer of government paid ‘document’ gatherers to all the layers of them that currently exist? Swelling one more government bureaucracy with people who often have very little practical knowledge of industrial processes of any kind, and who are given a very well paying ‘job’ simply because, (a.) they went to college for a few years as everyone told them they should, only to find there’s no practical use for anything they studied, and it would be ‘beneath them’ to have to take any job considered menial, and, (b.)some politician sees another way for government to profit from higher operating permit fees and the potential of enforcing penalties for non-compliance with every imagined problem these people will be encouraged to invent, and make government look good in the process.

The recommendations sent to wood producers also included the statement “the results of the report will not be released” or words to that effect.
Why not release the conclusions of the investigations into the cause(s) of the explosions at Babine and Lakewood?
A typical response from government; vague recommendations.
metalman.

The “vague recomendations” come from the vague or uncertain determinations of what exactly happened. Dust was no doubt a part of the chain of events as were airplanes were in 9/11. Would the world’s building codes be changed so that they could withstand the largest jets flying into them?

Just build everything to withstand cat 5 hurricanes, magnitude 10 earthquakes, 747 jets with terrorists..and we will all be perfectly safe… if we have no jobs…because no one will be an employer willing to risk a business venture.