Job Cuts Led to Dust Issues Says Lakeland Worker
Prince George, B.C. – An employee of Lakeland Mills for nearly 33 years, Lorne Hartford has testified at the Coroner’s inquest into the deaths of Glenn Roche and Alan Little, that the mill’s state of cleanliness was in a steady decline in the months leading up to the deadly blast in April of 2012.Hartford is the shop steward at the mill, and was shop steward at the time of the tragedy. He told the inquest job cuts meant regular maintenance was being overlooked.
He painted a picture of a workplace where the fine dust from beetle killed wood, was blanketing the walls and covering the floors, enough dust that workers would write messages on the wall that read “Clean this place up” and likened the messages to those one might see written on the side of a dirty van. Yet, he didn’t believe the accumulation of dust, or the dust that was in the air, could be explosive “I wasn’t concerned about an explosion, I was concerned about a fire because there was too much fuel everywhere.” He told the jury he had been conducting blow downs ( using compressed air to clean dust off equipment) for eleven years, oblivious to the dangers posed by combustible dust “I couldn’t beleive I was standing in a pile of gunpowder my whole career”.
He told the Coroner’s inquest he had come to believe that following the U.S. housing market crash, when the demand for lumber for new home construction was down, the mill was trying to be competitive, that the workforce was fearful of losing their jobs should the mill shut down. When asked if he was aware the workers had the right to refuse work if they thought conditions were unsafe he told the inquest he was aware of the clause, “Our attitude was, we do stuff like that ( refuse to work) and we’re out of a job, ’cause we were nearly out of a job already.”
Hartford said Glenn Roche was very vocal about dust accumulation, saying Roche would be pounding the lunch room table as he expressed his concerns, but Hartford says as shop steward he didn’t raise the concern with the union or with management because he was on graveyard shift and access to management was not likely during that shift, however, he also testified he was pressing management to upgrade the washrooms.
He told the inquest the dust collection system “was a wreck” that was frequently off line and when it went down “You knew it in 5 minutes” because the air would be thick with the fine dust.
Gavin Marshall, Counsel for Lakeland Mills, pressed Hartford about contradictions in testimony given today, compared to comments issued to the media. Under oath, Hartford had testified that on the day the mill exploded the conditions in the mill were “Utter chaos, I was disgusted, it was beyond belief. I had never seen it that bad, it looked like it hadn’t been cleaned for a couple of weeks.” But when he spoke to a reporter in the days after the blast, his comments were very different, he said at the time, “If it was a dust explosion then mills are in trouble, our mill wasn’t that dusty.”
Hartford also testified workers were reluctant to tell the Safety Committee about issues because “We knew there were things that we had told them that hadn’t been done, so why tell them more?”
He says the new management team at the mill has a new attitude and managers encourage workers to alert them to any safety concerns.
When asked what kind of recommendation he would like to see to prevent such a tragedy from happening again, he said he would like to see an improvement in communication, that daily briefings with management would be helpful in identifying issues. He also said it would be positive if workers were encouraged to think ‘globally’ and not just focus on the issues in their own work area, but the job site as a whole.
The inquest continues.
Comments
Thanks for the reporting 250
If there was fires in the mills before this explosion, then why did it not explode then. Or why was the explosion so intense this time???
I know that the investigation has determined that the explosion was the result of dust, however could it have been something else???
Other than dust are there any other similarities between this explosion, and the one at Burns Lake???
To have an explosion you have to have ignition and this can be the opening of an electrical motor controller or any electrical device that produces a spark on operation. The motor controls are not required to be dust proof in sawmill operations or any electrical device.
cheers
Having worked in the forest industry for 19 years now we were never concerned with dust explosions and neither was work safe it was not uncommon to walk through a couple of feet of dust buildup every day our primary concern at the time was fires as they are an ever present danger. Until the early 2000’s dust explosions were not even on the radar in the forest sector and even then when it was mentioned it was usually in passing our industry did not think dust explosions were prevalent.
Now walk through most mills and you will be hard pressed to find dust buildup and yes it took 2 mill explosions to change every bodies minds both the companies and the workers.
Regardless of what you think should of been done or what people tell you virtually no one in the industry gave a second thought to dust explosions until it happened.
It’s easy to blame companies about what they can do or not do. My question to everyone is what are you doing to keep yourself safe is clean up part of your job. Do you have the right to refuse unsafe work YES anyone do that NO so lets not blame the companies lets look in the mirror and say what can i do to keep this plant safe i’m sure you will come up with the right answer.
The mill was cited numerous times for dust in the air, and poor clean up practices. All this is documented on the wcb web website. That’s what makes this all the worse.
How can the company be cited for fire danger, over and over and then burn down, kill people, and no one is responsible.
Company runs the plant Ramiro. Not the workers.
not so sure history, most of the time the company owns the plant and the workers run it.
Read the testimony “history” – sounds more like they needed a new shop steward. How much of the testimony is now affected by the news over time, like in the above story, why is the testimony now so different from initial reports and testimony from the same people? Just like the WCB this inquest has dropped the ball, too much time has passed for the inquest to be effective or to even get reliable testimony. I don’t envy their jobs of sifting through the stories they are about to get.
Without containment even with an ignition source you don’t get an explosion you get a fire. Same as oxy acetylene torch, you can pump it in the air and ignite it and you get a fire for a second, pump it into a balloon and you get an explosion that will rattle your ribcage.
Dearth said it so well all I can say is “ditto”.
Having worked in the forest industry for 19 years now we were never concerned with dust explosions and neither was work safe it was not uncommon to walk through a couple of feet of dust buildup every day our primary concern at the time was fires as they are an ever present danger. Until the early 2000’s dust explosions were not even on the radar in the forest sector and even then when it was mentioned it was usually in passing our industry did not think dust explosions were prevalent.
Now walk through most mills and you will be hard pressed to find dust buildup and yes it took 2 mill explosions to change every bodies minds both the companies and the workers.
Regardless of what you think should of been done or what people tell you virtually no one in the industry gave a second thought to dust explosions until it happened.
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