New recommendations for sawmill safety in connection to 2012 sawmill explosions

VICTORIA–The province has implemented recommended changes to ensure safer working conditions for sawmill workers, and to help strengthen and streamline the investigative process from two reports released in 2014. But now new recommendations have been made.

This after the Jan.20, 2012 explosion at Babine Forest Products in Burns Lake where two people died and 19 were injured. Only three months later, on April 24, two people died and 44 were injured in a similar explosion at Lakeland Mills in Prince George.

The BC Coroners Service conducted inquests into the deaths of the four individuals and the government commissioned two reports in 2014. The reports and the verdicts from the BC Coroners Service included numerous recommendations directed at the government and other agencies on how to improve worker safety, inspections, education, enforcement and investigations.

A Vancouver lawyer, Lisa Helps, was hired earlier this year to assess the progress by WorkSafeBC and the government in implementing recommendations from the reports. Helps noted that all the recommendations from the reports had been implemented and that the changes have been positive.