So much for hindsight being 20/20.
Two accounts of the April 2012 explosion at Lakeland Mills released Monday - WorksSafeBC's Incident Investigation Report and the Criminal Justice Branch's Clear Statement - provide jarringly different views of a tragedy that killed two men and injured 22 others.
WorkSafeBC says the explosion, a massive conflaguration fuelled by wood dust, was preventable, that many of Lakeland's dust control measures were either lacking or ineffective; that aspects of clean up and maintenance were inadequete; and waste conveyors in the basement of the mill did not properly collect the fine wood dust that contributed to the blast. The Criminal Justice Branch, examined WorkSafeBC's work and dismissed its recommendation of charges. Its statement says Lakeland's owners could not have reasonably foreseen a disaster at a mill that numerous witnesses cleared, including a WorkSafeBC officer trained and experienced in dust dangers. He did not believe there was a problem at the doomed Prince George facility when he conducted an inspection around two months before the blast.
Together they make a compelling case for a more thorough examination of mill safety in British Columbia, one that goes beyond a pair of coroner's inquests. Because neither report sufficiently explains how so many eyes saw so much dust and, yet, just four months after Babine Forest Products exploded in Burns Lake, Lakeland Mills suffered the same deadly fate.
To shamelessly steal from Oscar Wilde, to lose one sawmill may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
To be sure, the reports are not necessarily contradictory - in its statement, the CJB says "the fact that something may been preventable does not, by itself, provide the basis for prosectution." And while much has been made of WorkSafeBC rendering portions of evidence inadmissable to a court, the CJB took pains to point out "this fact did not determine the outcome of the charge assessment."
The CJB also quotes Canadian courts in saying "the wisdom gained by hindsight is not necessarily reflective of reasonableness prior to the incident." That may be true from a legal point of view but it's hard to read of some of the events leading up to that April day and not be left wondering at the amount of dust in the mill and the handful of responses to it.
The WorkSafeBC report tells of an engineer touring the mill who was consulting on an industrial vacuum system to address the dust problems. He told investigators that he told company representatives the dust presented a "potential risk of explosion"; no one could corroborate his warning and the CJB report dismisses it. However the pictures he took, which are included in the WorkSafe report, are chilling: a stairway caked in dust; a white-floured conveyor; a pile on a basement wall.
Workers told WorkSafe that dust levels were excessive, "brutal"; one told of an area covered in "fine, fine, fine dust and it was like walking on flour"; of an electrical box so stuffed with dust a switch couldn't be flipped OFF; of being so covered in dust after a job his crew "came out looking like snowmen."
According to the CJB, it seems to have culminated in a Feb. 3, 2012 call in which a worker anonymously complained to WorkSafeBC that the excessive build-up of sawdust and a lack of clean-up workers would turn "[Lakeland] into the next Burns Lake sawmill." Three days later, two WSBC officers investigated.
They were told of a fire on Feb. 5 in the baghouse where a halogen light had sparked sawdust. One officer did note that the mill appeared to be not as clean as usual and was told it was due to an ongoing construction project and the strain of a new third shift. The other, trained and experienced with dust fires, said, if called to testify, he did not believe there was a widespread problem of excessive dust in the Lakeland sawmill and it did not warrant issuing an order.
Here is where the CJB and WorkSafeBC seem to differ the most. WorkSafeBC's 99-page report touches on the Feb. 6 inspection twice briefly and absolves itself by concluding "Lakeland was ultimately responsible to ensure its operations complies with occupational health and safety legislation." For the CJB, one could argue the inspection and possible testimony from the WSBC officer forms the bulk of Lakeland's potential due diligence defence and the branch's reasoning for not pursuing charges.
There's nothing sinister at work here. The CJB, quoting another WSBC officer, points out dust explosions during wood processing prior to Babine and Lakeland had all occurred in closed vessels such as dust collectors; it wasn't thought at the time how machinery like conveyors, such as those at Lakeland, could produce the concentration of dust - "containment" - necessary to heighten the risk of a blast.
As a Prince George fire inspector, who also cleared Lakeland prior to the blast, told the CJB: "I know there was a hazard. Did I know how bad it was? I was naive like probably the rest of the whole industry. And every other inspector in all of Canada."
Partially what made Babine and Lakeland so unique and deadly was, according to WSBC, the weather conditions at the time of their explosions were dry with low humidity. This was combined with another new variable - dry beetle-killed wood, which produces finer, drier and hence more explosive dust.
Impossible to see. And yet, using the full cruelty of hindsight, everyone knew there was a danger with excessive wood dust at the Prince George mill - workers, Lakeland management, WorkSafeBC, the engineer who toured the mill, the fire inspector. One mill had already exploded and no one knew quite why.
But no one could put their finger on what to do at Lakeland Mills and it kept running until 9:37 p.m. on April 23, 2012.
And the mills are still running. Industry swears it's doing its darndest to clear the air in its mills but last March the Vancouver Sun's Gordon Hoekstra reported that, of the 144 mills inspected last winter, 42 per cent failed to comply with WorkSafeBC rules on potentially explosive wood dust.
There have been no Babines or Lakelands for two years but no one can say with confidence whether that's from lessons learned or luck. No one's to blame and no crimes apparently have been comitted but it is clear both the sawmill industry and the regulatory apparatus that supports it failed to deal with a problem that was literally under its nose, in its eyes and caked on the walls.
How does that happen? Will it happen again? Those are questions that can only be addressed by a clear-eyed, thoughtful look at mill safety and it's hard to see how that can be done in any way other than with an independent public inquiry.
