It is not known what the employees of the destroyed Babine Forest Products will do at the new mill, when it is rebuilt next year.
Some don't even want to go back.
It was announced on Tuesday that mill owner Hampton Affiliates of Oregon was moving forward with a rebuild. Site preparation work was already done or underway, and the formal construction is set to get underway in the spring. The new mill is expected to be sawing lumber by early 2014.
"For me I don't care if they rebuild or not. It is the same management, the same company from the States," said Dirk Weissbach, one of those injured in the January blast that killed two and destroyed the Babine superstructure near Burns Lake. "The experiences are too bad, and I don't know who is responsible. I would need to know that first. This needs to come out. For the P.G. mill, too [Lakeland Mills was destroyed in April by a similar fatal explosion]. For the community, it is probably good news, but for me it doesn't affect me much."
Syd Neville was also injured in the Babine blast. He is still involved in physical and psychological therapy.
"I hope they do rebuild, but I'm not jumping for joy," Neville said. "I'll believe it when I see it. There is a lot of fine print. [When WorkSafeBC] turned things over to Crown prosecutors, a lot of people think that will make it it harder for Hampton. If WorkSafe had released its report to the public and issued a fine, then I'd say great, but because Crown counsel is investigating, we think they are looking for a scapegoat - one person they can pin it on."
Contrary to some media reports, the union representing the workers at both Babine and Lakeland is not pushing Crown counsel to lay charges - civil or criminal - against the mill owners. United Steelworkers-IWA 1-424 president Frank Everitt said there was no such sentiment he knew of and "it would be speculation on my part to say anything about the Crown investigation but I don't think it's the case that their look at the WorkSafe report will pull the carpet out from under the rebuild announcement."
"We have co-operated fully throughout the WorkSafe investigation and will continue to co-operate to bring this matter to conclusion," said Steve Zika, Hampton's CEO. "We were surprised by [WorkSafe's choice to hand their findings off to Crown counsel for additional considerations before going public] and disappointed that we are not yet able to see the report of WorkSafe's findings so that we can fully understand what happened that tragic night of the explosion."
Some of the employees said it was good for the provincial prosecutor to have a look at the details of the WorkSafe investigation first, because explosions simply are not supposed to happen on a worksite, so culpability in some way traces back to management and ownership, they said.
Neville said he was not focused on causal factors so much as healing, and knows others are like that as well.
"All I'm thinking about is being a better dad," he said. "Part of that is having a job, sure, but I'd like to just be able to play with them and not be too sore to go out in the yard."
He attributes his lack of psychological angst to "the experience of growing up on a farm" where work is hard, and life lessons about death, loss, injury and rebirth are part of the lifestyle.
"I can't even contemplate the individual effects that event would have had on people," said Everitt. "I know it had real impacts on people who weren't even there that night, so indeed it will have had its effects on those who were."
Some, he said, have found interim employment elsewhere, especially at local mines, and may decide not to return to Babine once it does start again. He said, "All of those employees will have the right to come back if they choose to, and we will be working with the employer to ensure that happens. Things are very smooth with the employer so far in that regard. That was all in place before the announcement to rebuild."
Weissbach cautioned everyone to demand better safety protocols not only at a new Babine operation, but at all forest industry sites in B.C. People have died at other local mills in recent years, he said, "but it took two mills to blow up before there's any action. That is WorkSafe's responsibility, too. When you go to work in the forest industry, you don't know if you're coming home at the end of the day. That has to change."
