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WHAT HAPPENED?
Lakeland Mills explosion inquest gets underway Nobody’s going to die
I didn’t hear or smell
I’m dying here,
on my shift: Alan Little
anything wrong: Electrician
I’m dying: Glenn Roche
Bill Phillips editor@pgfreepress.com Both Alan Little and Glenn Roche were worried about dust in the Lakeland Mill prior to the April 23, 2012 explosion that killed them. “Nobody’s going to die on my shift,” Little, a supervisor at the mill, told Roche and fellow head rig operator Brian Primrose, when he ordered a shutdown for clean up in January of 2012 following two fires at Lakeland and an explosion and fire at Babine Forest Products in Burns Lake that killed two men. “Glenn and I were both concerned about the amount of dust (at the Lakeland Mill),” Primose told a coroner’s inquest into the deaths of Little and Roche Monday morning in Prince George, adding that’s why they met with Little. Roche and Little were killed, and 22 others injured, when Lakeland Mills’ plant in Prince George was destroyed by an explosion April 23, 2012. It followed a similar explosion at
s far as electrician Donald Zwozdesky is concerned, the Lakeland Mills explosion and fire was not caused by a gear reducer. “It irritated me that (WorkSafeBC) identified a gear reducer,” he told a coroner’s inquest into the April 23, 2012 explosion at the mill that killed Alan Little and Glenn Roche and injured 22 others. A WorkSafeBC report into the accident pegged the ignition source as a gear-reducer fan that worked its way loose and became stuck in a steel screen with the shaft continuing to spin. “They get hot,” he said of gear-reducers. “But they never get hot enough to start a fire. I could still read the label. I don’t know how that caught on fire.” Zwozdesky explained that, in the mill, smells and noises are the first indicator of something going wrong. Workers are attuned to smelling anything burning and immediately shut things down to find out what’s wrong. Zwozdesky had walked through the head rig area just a
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Phone 250-563-6444 Toll Free 1-800-219-6327 910 Third Avenue, Prince George, BC Email polarrefrig@telus.net polarrefrig.ca
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ther than smoke inhalation, Wayne Cleghorn emerged from the April 23, 2012 explosion and fire that destroyed Lakeland Mills unharmed. The lunch horn had sounded a few minutes prior to the blast and Cleghorn was in a basement washroom, not far from the epicenter of the blast. “It sounded like someone threw gas on a fire,” he told the six-member coroner’s inquest jury Wednesday. “I felt the shockwave.” He said he knew he couldn’t stay where he was and stumbled his way through the pitch black, at times feeling his way around. He eventually made his way upstairs where there was some light and he could see that walls had fallen in. Upstairs there were small fires all over the place, he said. Cleghorn worked his way outside and, with other workers, gathered at a mustering station. “Nobody knew what to do,” he said. “… People were walking around, some were yelling. Most were quiet, in
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