Prince George, B.C.- The inquest into the deaths of Alan Little and Glenn Roche continues,  and continues to fall behind schedule.This morning,  for the second straight day,  the inquest got underway  nearly 2 and half hours later than scheduled as lawyers  discussed a number of matters with the Chief Coroner Lisa Lapoint.  When  members of the public were finally  allowed into the courtroom,  juror number 3 was no longer present, presumably excused although  his conspicuous absence  was not mentioned  to anyone in open court.

This is the second time since the  inquest  started on March 2nd, that  a juror has been excused. The number of jurors is now down to 5.

The inquest was to be in the hands of the jurors by now,  but  testimony is now scheduled into Tuesday of next week with the  inquest sitting until 6  on most days.

When testimony  finally resumed, it focused on what witness  Kim Hess, a WorkSafe Hygiene Officer, knew about the explosive qualities of  wood dust.  She said she had heard of dust explosions as far back as 2009,but her knowledge was  that it only  happened in contained  spaces. She said she had a hard time “wrapping her mind around” the idea that a whole sawmill could  explode as a result of dust being ignited.

When she and fellow WorkSafe Officer Darren Beattie inspected Lakeland Mills on February 6th, she was looking to see if airborne dust exceeded  acceptable health levels, and  that  she estimated  the level of dust in the air at the time wasn’t half of the  “action level” of 2.5 millgrams per cubic meter.

She also testified the level of dust required to be in the air for a dust explosion is 40 grams per cubic meter.

She and Beattie had  gone to the mill that Monday morning  to respond to an anonymous call about dust hazards that had been filed with WorkSafe  on the Friday before.  She  admitted she did not talk to any of the employees working on the  operations level,  and said it would have been helpful  if  she and Beattie had been  advised as to the area of the mill the caller was  complaining about.

Neither she nor Beattie  inspected the  area  in the basement  where the  explosion  is said to have  been sparked,  and where numerous  photos had been taken illustrating considerable levels of dust and debris.