Don Zwozdesky is there that night.
He sees Glenn Roche emerge, his body seared by the flames.
He hears his voice.
"I'm still on fire."
"Is my face gone?"
"I'm going to die, right?"
If there is one common theme in Samantha Wright Allen's three-part series, Life After Lakeland, which concludes today, it's the tragic irony of the title.
"I exist. I don't live," Zwozdesky says to describe his life now.
Roche and Alan Little died shortly after the April 23, 2012 explosion and fire levelled Lakeland Mills. Zwozdesky, Bruce Germyn, John Engstrom and others survived but they are shadows of their former selves. Their lives have been cut into two - before Lakeland and afterwards.
Their physical injuries were substantial and life-altering but the greatest wounds have been to their brains and their minds. Along with the headaches, the aversion to brightness and loud noises, the inability to concentrate on tasks and the loss of short-term memory comes frustration, impatience, anger, despair. In other words, the logical, thinking mind is fully aware of itself and it knows the brain and soul have been damaged irreparably but it is helpless to repair it.
It's self-consciousness at its most cruel. It feels like an out-of-body experience, where they are fully aware of the hurtful things they are saying to others but are powerless to prevent the rage from bubbling over.
"From what I was hearing I'm not too nice of a person to be around and I knew that," Zwozdesky said. "I believe I'm a totally different person so, if I actually am, it would be really hard for them (his family and friends)."
Time itself has been stolen. They are human versions of the watches and clocks found in the debris of Hiroshima 70 years ago, frozen at the fateful instant, unable to move ahead. While the hours and days proceed in steady sequence for the rest of us, the victims of Lakeland find themselves moving forward in body alone, the sights and sounds of that horrible night still so close and so persistent, both awake and asleep. There is no escape, no rest, no peace from what haunts them.
Not only does the world move on but there are questions to answer, forms to fill out, examinations to undergo and decisions to be made. For the adjusters at WorkSafeBC, they are also trapped, bound by formulas, protocols, assessments and procedures. They are not allowed to view the Lakeland victims with sympathy or caring. They only have clients and each case before them is a file, with a number. They are guardians of public funds that too many people try to steal from too often by faking or inflating their injuries. Separating the real victims from the scam artists would challenge Solomon, never mind average, well-intentioned men and women just trying to do the best job they can.
And so it goes, on to the coroner and the jury, who made more than 30 sincere and helpful recommendations that could go a long way to prevent something like this happening again. The testimony provided much-needed insight on mill operations leading up to that night but there it ends. For the Roche and Little families, as well as the living Lakeland victims, that is small consolation. They have heard the apologies made by Greg Stewart, president of Sinclar Group, the owner of Lakeland Mills. Now they are looking for someone to accept blame, to be accountable for what happened.
Not only can Stewart not provide that, he has to put the well-being of the company he continues to manage first. That means the Sinclar Group is appealing the $724,163 WorkSafeBC penalty. Some may see that as cold-hearted, ruthless corporate selfishness but it is simply a response anyone would give when they feel wrongly penalized by a public entity. For the Sinclar Group, they refuse to accept responsibility for what they see as WorkSafeBC's failure to protect employees and employers, as well as the organization's 20/20 vision in hindsight.
Stewart's responsibility is to the present and the future, to the shareholders who invested their hard-earned money into the company and to the men and women and families dependent on the jobs Lakeland Mills and Sinclar Group provides. Sadly, tragically, that is not the reality for the direct victims.
Ronda Roche's husband is still not coming home and his frightened, strained voice is as real in Don Zwozdesky's head now as the moment he first heard it.
-- Managing editor Neil Godbout
