Whatever blew up Babine Forest Products is still shrouded in ash and twisted metal. Two teams of investigators are sifting for facts on the massive site, most of it blasted to bits by a Jan. 20 fireball that killed Robert Luggi, 45, and Carl Charlie, 42. Nineteen others were injured, some severely.
The first investigators on the scene - the RCMP and BC Coroners' Service - have now closed their cases. They were at the burning site due to the deaths of Luggi and Charlie, and to establish if there was a suspicious tone to the incident.
"It was a dangerous scene for us; there were areas of the facility still burning as our team worked so we all had to be very careful," said coroner Stephen Fonseca, manager of the Identification and Disaster Response Unit.
"You had a hard time figuring how anyone survived, if you just looked at the scene itself, before looking into all the factors," said his colleague coroner Dr. Bill Inkster.
The RCMP took on a lot of the investigative work on behalf of the coroners' service, until the two fatal victims were located and it was confirmed they were the only ones who died. Both of those agencies then stepped back.
"Our investigators look for criminal nature. Finding no criminal elements to the evidence at the scene, we turned the scene over to WorkSafeBC. It is their investigation now," said RCMP spokeswoman Const. Lesley Smith.
"We are looking for a cause," said Bruce Clarke, the Prince George-based regional manager for WorkSafeBC. "It is a critical investigation for us. I have never seen a mill go up like that before, in all my years working in the bush and with WorkSafe. Because half the wood manufacturing operations in the province are based in our region, we have to take this investigation extremely seriously."
Donna Freeman, a provincial spokesperson for WorkSafe, said the investigative hurdles were huge. "This is a very unique situation, given the scale of the damage done to the work site and the challenges that presents to collect evidence," she said. No timelines were estimated for completing the investigation other than "months."
The other agency with people involved at the Babine Forest Products site is the BC Safety Authority. Spokesman Roy Siojo told The Citizen that, like WorkSafe's overlapping investigation, this would not be finished any time soon.
"Our technical experts will be looking for factors with regard to the technical equipment," said Siojo, explaining the difference between their probe and WorkSafeBC's. "We regulate electrical, gas, railways, boilers and pressure vessels all of which were onsite at Babine Forest Products. We are interviewing people who worked there, looking into company records and other documents, we are on the site itself, so it is a long process with a lot of investigative elements."
None of those interviewed could remember any incident like it in recent B.C. history. Fonseca said it has taken aback everyone he knows who is involved in the aftermath.
"When we walked into that hall [the first town meeting following the blast] and there were 350 people in there waiting for us, that was something rare and hard to prepare yourself for," he said. "Two deaths are what we are dealing with here, and that sounds like a pretty manageable case load for any investigative agency, but that number does not give an indication of the true weight of this catastrophe. It puts a lot of pressure on the different agencies involved."
Also a first for Fonseca was seeing the BC Coroners' Service and the RCMP thanked for their efforts in the obituary of a victim, as was done in the Lakes District News by the family of Robert Luggi. That, he said, brings the enormity of the situation back down to human terms and motivates people to do their best, no matter what role they play in the investigation.
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