BURNS LAKE — Hampton Affiliates CEO Steve Zika told a coroner's inquest Wednesday he was concerned about the level of dust at the Burns Lake sawmill the company owned but did not think it would have fueled an explosion.
Robert Luggi, 45, and Carl Charlie, 42, died in the Jan. 20, 2012 blast that destroyed Babine Forest Products and left 19 other employees with serious injuries, many of them suffering severe burns.
A WorkSafeBC investigation concluded the dry, powdery sawdust from beetle-killed pine, provided the fuel for the blast.
Under questioning from coroner's counsel John Orr, Zika said he would visit Babine on a quarterly basis and came away concerned about the haze the dust left in the mill's air.
Zika said he felt employees should not have to work in those conditions but added steps were being taken to deal with the problem.
Those included hiring more people to do clean up and bringing in a vacuum truck. Babine management was also in the process of purchasing a larger baghouse to increase the mill's capacity for handling the extra wood dust, the inquest heard.
And while he was aware wood dust could fuel explosions in other types of operations, notably pellet plants, Zika said he had never heard of a "catastrophic dust explosion in a sawmill" prior to the blast at Babine and one that occurred at Lakeland Mills in Prince George three months later.
The Oregon-based sawmill operator bought Babine in 2006 from West Fraser, which had been ordered to sell the facility after the government concluded anti-trust regulations had been violated.
Zika said the exceptionally low stumpage fee the province was charging for beetle-killed pine made processing that type of wood a "positive" over the short term but a risk over the longer run because eventually the supply of that type of timber would run out.
To reduce costs even further and take advantage of the low stumpage while there was still beetle-killed pine available, Zika said the amount of time the mill was processing lumber was increased from 80 to 100 hours per week.
Although it was run for longer durations, Zika said that on an hourly basis, not as much lumber was pushed through by Hampton as had been under West Fraser. But he also said it was becoming more difficult to process beetle-killed pine because as time went on, the dead trees got drier.
"A log that goes through that's two years dead is different than a log that goes through that's three years dead," Zika said. Not only would the timber break up more easily , it would produce more dust, which the mill's dust collection system had a tougher time dealing with, Zika said.
"I was aware that the dust situation wasn't getting better," Zika said.
Zika said Hampton's intention was not there to simply take advantage of the low stumpage and then leave once the pine had run out.
He said the company was interested in purchasing the mill because Hampton wanted to secure a supply of SPF (spruce-pine-fir) for its wholesale divison. Hampton's mills in the U.S. Pacific Northwest produced primary Douglas Fir and hemlock, he said.
"But we definitely understood there was a risk that after about 10 years we would start to get tight and it was going to definitely be a challenge in terms of keeping the mills in work," Zika said.
By the time Hampton had bought the mill, Babine was 30 years old and no longer considered the world-class sawmill it had been when first built. And because West Fraser had put the facility on the sales block, Zika said it was not putting as much money into upkeep.
Hampton spent millions upgrading and repairing the old mill before it was destroyed. Building the new mill cost more than the company has received from the insurance company, the inquest heard.
"It was a terrible financial investment," Zika said.
The new Babine sawmill is capable of producing 200 million board feet of lumber per year, compared to 320 million at its predecessor. Hampton continues to hold an 89-per-cent stake in the operation while the Burns Lake Native Development Corporation, owned by six bands in the area, owns the remaining 11 per cent.
