No Justice – Say Families of Lakeland Explosion Victims
Rhonda Roche reads from a prepared statement – photo 250News
Prince George, B.C.- For John Little, father of Allan Little who died as a result of injuries sustained in the Lakeland explosion in April of 2012, the Coroner’s inquest failed to find any accountability for his son’s death.
The Coroner’s jury found the death of Allan Little and Glenn Roche to be accidental, and presented 33 recommendations to prevent such a tragedy from recurring. “If accountability wasn’t determined, then justice wasn’t served” says John Little. He added that “Hopefully with the recommendations that were made, the workers in the future will work in a safer environment than has been in the past and other families won’t have to go through what we went through. It’s probably wishful thining but I don’t think that’s true.”
He says nothing short of a public inquiry would have put this matter to rest “That’s what we asked for in the beginning and that’s what it should have been.”
The widow of Glenn Roche, Rhonda, read from a prepared statement and she too wished there had been a public inquiry “I don’t believe this was the appropriate venue, as no matter what facts are uncovered, there is no accountability no knowledge and no justice is acquired.” She says the evidence helped “fill in the blanks” of what happened on the night her husband suffered burns to 90%of his body, injuries that would take his life.
“This is now public record and I believe the facts speak for themselves they show part of the systematic failures, and do point out the parties responsible for my husband Glenn’s death, the death of Al Little and the injuries to many of the other workers It is unfortunate these proceedings do not assign fault or accountability.”
A coroner’s inquest cannot find blame for an incident, it can only determine the location, date and time of a death and make a ruling as to whether the death was natural, suicide, homicide, accidental or undetermined. The jury can make recommendations to try to prevent such deaths in the future.
The jury made 33 recommendations which call for changes in the way incidents are reported to WorkSafe B.C., how emergency services respond to major incidents, how such incidents are investigated, and ways to improve the culture of safety in the workplace through the sharing of safety committee minutes and stressing a worker’s rights to refuse work if they believe there are safety concerns. (Complete recommendations can be found here)
“It has been an emotional journey for myself, my family and the injured workers” said Rhonda Roche who expressed some hope “We can all hope that from the recommendations provided at this inquest that they will be implemented,” who added “To ensure that at the end of the day workers may get home to their families.” She told reporters that perhaps if she had heard from Lakeland that the company was sorry that this happened instead of “I’m sorry for your loss”, that she might have found closure.
“We are truly thankful for the recommendations that are directed to us” says WorkSafe BC spokesperson Trish Knight Chernecki “We will take them seriously and examine them carefully.”
Coroner’s Counsel , John Orr, says although the recommendations are not binding, the Coroner’s Service has seen compliance when previous recommendations have been made “Generally they (recommendations) are very effective” he says the Coroner’s Service follows up to see what’s happening with the recommendations “We always get responses back, people are responsive to recommendations to a Coroner’s Inquest and historically, they’ve made amazing changes in society.”
Sinclar Group President Greg Stewart ( in photo at right) 
“I am incredibly sorry this event has happened” said Stewart ” My heart goes out to the families as well as to the injured employees and their families and the hardship that’s resulted from this. I hope somewhere down the future we can get closure, I’m not so sure that closure will come from an event ( inquest) like this.”
Comments
It really smells around here!
I understand the need to get the justice you feel is deserved, and it is extremely hard to hear, but sometimes an accident is just that – tragic accident.
Read what witnesses who were there had to say. Every accident has a cause. Finger pointing, ignorance , inaction and incompetence tend to hide root cause, sort of like dust does as it settles from the air.
Nothing in this world will not bring back Glenn and Allan. No words, no fines, no incarcerations.
It is a tragedy.
What did the readers learn.
# 1) The workers worked in fear that if they complained too much, they will shut down the mill.
In the Worksafe BC regulations, section 3.12 and 3.13. Every worker is entitled to refuse unsafe work with out penalty or persecution.
The worker informs the dust level is too high and is dangerous to work in, to his immediate supervisor. It is the supervisors responsibility to assess the situation. If he deems it to be safe, and something happens, than the supervisor is in a whole swack of trouble.
If the supervisor accept the complaint and the immediate shift manager does not deal with it, than it goes to the mill manager. The responsibility keeps going up the ladder until it hits the person who signed the health and safety program.
The other avenues is to get the union and WCB involved.
#2) The other failure lies with the BC ambulance services.
The policy writers were so concerned by placing words to protect their butts, they failed to recognize that those words prevented the emergency workers to do the job that they signed on for. The job is to make an immediate assessment of the situation to determine what needs to be done to make a difference. Like firefighters, the expectation of risk is known to them when they took on the job. But pencil pushers wanted to protect their butts.
That is my opinion, Don’t let the losses of Glenn and Allan be in vain, make the difference
It is up to the workers to hold managements feet to the fire. wouldn’t it have been better to complain then result that happened.
Where was the union and the safety committee? Lets hope that they too have learned from this tragedy. I guess hind sight is 20/20.
Cheers
Remember, take an active part in you union its the only protection you have on the job site.
cheers
He Spoke: You do realise that paramedics are NOT rescue personnel. They aren’t the ones to stand in harms way like firefighters or police…..
At no time did a paramedic ever sign up to risk their lives to the same degree as those firemen or cops.
Paramedics receive neither the training nor the appropriate equipment to attempt that kind of rescue.
When people go into those situations untrained, they end up injured or dead. Then they are no good to those they’ve come to treat and transport to hospital.
More inter-agency training is the key, so that every agency responding understands their responsibilities and limitations and the responsibility and limitations of the other agencies. That is a recommendation that will really count.
I notice that they did not put blame on the people that just had to see it for themselves and had the overpasses blocked with cars parked on both sides so that the ambulances could not get past.
PGCoffeeAdict.. This is true.. The Sullivan mine incident was the game changer on how BCAS responds to incidents.. As well BC uses the incident command system which was developed based on inquests from the California wildfire fatalities and most recentl incident command was re done based on recommendations from 9-11.
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