Prince George, BC – Testifying at the Coroner’s Inquest into the deaths of Glenn Roche and Alan Little, WorkSafe BC’s Barry Nakahara said he felt the blast that ripped through Lakeland Mills on the night of April 23rd, 2012.

“It actually shook my house,” said the Regional Prevention Manager.  “I thought, ‘This has to be a terrorist thing’, that was my first thought.”

Although Nakahara had been working with a group of WorkSafe BC Prevention officers to examine potential causes of that type of incident since the deadly explosion that leveled Babine Forest Products just three months earlier, he said combustible dust had not been pinpointed as the problem.

Under repeated questioning from Inquest Counsel, John Orr, as to why industry wasn’t advised of the hazard posed by combustible dust following Babine, Nakahara said there were numerous potential factors at Babine that had to be ruled out, including other fuel sources like natural gas.  “We simply did not have enough information, in my mind.”

“What did you have after Lakeland?” asked Orr.  “All the work we had done and, then, we had a second sawmill explode,” Nakahara replied.

He said work had started on a hazard alert at the provincial level, but it had not been finalized by April 23rd.

Within four days of the tragedy at Lakeland, WorkSafe issued a directive order to BC’s 153 operating sawmills.  Nakahara said it required mills to: 1. conduct a risk assessment with regards to combustible dust, 2. develop dust control programs, and 3. develop training and education programs on the potential hazard of combustible dust.

By the end of September 2012, Nakahara said all mills had compliance plans in place to address combustible dust.  He said recent inspections of 56 sawmills found a 97-percent compliance rate, with just two orders issued.  The initiative has also been expanded to include other wood manufacturing facilities like pulp and paper, pellet operations, oriented strandboard, and MDF plants.

The Coroner’s Inquest resumes at 9am this morning at the BC Provincial Courthouse in Prince George with BC Fire Commissioner Gordon Anderson set to testify.