B.C. forests and mining minister Pat Bell has issued a province-wide challenge to the forest industry and workers: Make this the first year there are no deaths in the forest sector.
The challenge was first issued last November to a Forest Safety Council gathering, but the message was reiterated at the annual Log Truckers Convention, held this year in Victoria, Bell said Thursday.
The annual death toll - which had averaged above 20 in the past two decades, and hit a peak of 43 in 2005 - has been dropping in the past few years. There were four deaths in 2009 and six in 2010. For the first time in at least 15 years, there were no forest sector deaths in Northern B.C. in 2010.
"It will take a concerted effort from each and every person in the forest sector," Bell told reporters on a conference call.
He said the province has a couple of new safety initiatives it expects to implement this year, but stressed safety must be a ground-up effort.
Bell said he told the truck loggers convention it is important to continue to improve the safety record because the people being hurt and killed are neighbours, family and co-workers.
Since 2005, the industry-led B.C. Forest Safety Council has been spearheading a safety certification program.
The program's legitimacy was helped when major timber holders adopted a policy that required logging contractors to obtain the safety certification, and the province required Crown timber bid contractors to be safety certified.
Now more than 2,700 contractors are certified under the B.C. Forest Safety Council safety program, with another 2,100 registered for the certification.
The joint effort by industry and the B.C. government also led to a push to upgrade logging roads. Provincewide radio-calling protocols were also adopted.
While fallers lead the death toll on the Coast, in Northern B.C., logging truck drivers are the most likely to be killed in the forest sector.
The Citizen has documented more than 30 forest industry transportation deaths since 1995, many of those log truckers on backwoods in the North. There were no log truck deaths in 2007, but two pickup drivers working for forestry companies were killed on resource roads in the North. In 2008, two log truckers have been killed in Northern B.C., one of those on a resource road north of Fort. St. James, and another on a highway north of Fort St. John.
No truckers were killed in 2009 or 2010.
