THIS FIRST:

Wood Dust in Sawmills - Forest Industry Advisory
We Must Remember!
The Moment: A Safety Documentary
Youtube.com Logging Video Feature Pick

WOOD DUST IN SAWMILLS - FOREST INDUSTRY ADVISORY
BC Wood Manufacturers are fully committed to the Health and Safety of our employees as our number one priority

As British Columbia's foremost wood products manufacturers, our companies are fully committed to the Health and Safety of our employees as our number one priority. We have come together today to share information and develop an industry-wide response to mill safety following the devastating explosions at Babine Forest Products and Lakeland Mills. Until WorkSafe BC concludes their investigations into these incidents, none of us can say with certainty what caused the explosions at Babine and Lakeland. It is not known if the causes of the two events are connected in any way.

We encourage and appreciate the involvement and contributions of employee groups and union leadership toward enhancing sawmill safety.

“This is a significant collaborative effort to ensure that BC’s wood products manufacturers are operating to the absolute highest standards,” said West Fraser CEO Hank Ketcham. “We look forward to working with our industry colleagues to advance these important initiatives.”

“We will continue to be transparent with our employees, with government and with each other if we identify new combustion hazards or means of improving safety procedures,” said Canfor CEO Don Kayne. “We have taken every opportunity to increase our efforts in safety since the serious incidents at Lakeland and Babine and this joint initiative is a next and very important step.”

Industry Resources

From WorkSafeBC
WorkSafeBC combustible dust strategy - Phase 1 (sawmills)
Bulletin – Cleanup of Hazardous and Combustible Dust
Best Practices Sawmill Dust Control Workgroup

From Forest Industry
Joint Industry Communiqué on Mill  Safety
Wood Dust in Sawmills - Compilation of Industry Best Practices

Media Contact:
John Allan, President and CEO, Council of Forest Industries: 604-891-1205

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WE MUST REMEMBER
Former Forest Magazine Columnist Bill Moore comments on the appalling number of forest industry fatalities in 1978-79

The British Columbia Lumberman Magazine
May1980

I have before me – as I write this – the list of fatal accidents reported by the B.C. logging industry for the year 1979. The figures are appalling. They show a quite dramatic increase in fatals over 1978. In totals they read, 1978 – 47 and 1979 – 61. These are not statistics – they are people. Our own British Columbia people. These are unforgivable figures to many lonesome people in our province. Those lonesome people remember. We must remember too.

In the horror of world tragedies today, it is natural for most young people going about their daily routines to harden themselves to the hostage takings, the assassinations, the mass killings that are a part of the evening television news hour. And sadly, it seems that such affairs will only get more severe as the bitterness of minorities and revolutionary groups grows. We are helpless to do very much about such world tragedies. But we must not let this horror of other places dull our sense of responsibility, so needed now, to our own people.

The figures I have quoted are from the Workers’ Compensation Board of B.C. They are the reported figures, they are not necessarily all directly attributable to an “on-the-job in an eight hour day “ accident. Included in the figures, as they have been for the twenty-five years that I know of, are those of the work force killed in air, land or sea accidents, while possibly on their way to a job. Last year eight such cases occurred. In 1978 there were three. In all these figures there is always a carryover of accidents that became fatal the following year.

I state the above not to soften the blow, but to bring realism to such reports. I have heard those who would even argue with the figures saying that sometimes certain of the cases are not really “on the job” accidents. I am convinced that they are reasonably consistent down through the years and that to question whether three or four of the cases are compensable or not is a very moot point. The figures represent people – B.C. People who died because of a related accident associated with the workplace. They are still unforgivable figures.

Click to Listen - Strong Winds and Widow Makers courtesy of Buzz Martin

Words and words and words are written and said about our industrial accidents. I have spent 35 years saying those words, listening to them, writing them and reading them. The accidents are no different now, in the logging industry, than they were in 1945 except the machines involved may be different.

A careless act by the deceased has nearly always been the major cause of death in our hazardous workplace, the forest. Looking over the description of the fatal accidents for all these years one is always shocked to see the sameness involved in the causes. The log, hooked in the middle, upended. The snag coming backwards at the faller. The vehicle going to fast. The sadness lies in the sameness of the accidents.

There can be no doubt as to the sincerity of so many in this industry as to wanting to see a reduction in this terrible toll against life. But sincerity is not enough. Action and a change in attitudes about accident prevention will be the only answer accepted on the fatals reports in say 1990. And that attitude must change, through management and labor and from big or small, organized or unorganized.

Accident prevention and safety have for the most part delegated to camp committees, managers and a few dedicated safety instructors who generally work apart from each other. Where there once was some form of big company safety co-ordinated training program, now the individual companies look after their own individual programs. The WCB has the only co-ordinated accident prevention teaching body in our province. But we know it is a large industry that cannot be reached by just one group. There are simply not enough people to go around. So much duplication is created this way and new men are not instructed or shown how in the same manner from company to company.

The Council of Forest Industries once had an excellent staff of top flight safety instructors that toured the camps, put on foreman seminars and had the trust of many loggers. There was a time when the Truck Loggers Association also belonged to this group and as a result nearly all the logging camps on the coast had good instruction from good instructors on a co-ordinated consistent level. Sad to say this is not the case anymore. And it is not what that program did, but what its potential was if it had kept healthy and grew as the camps and plants grew.

Patience is the greatest virtue of those “dedicated” to safe production. No program is ever completed, there is no ending to safety. It goes on and must always be guided by ever-better ways and means. Just as a good salesman must “Tune up” his program every so often to keep in step with the times, so must good safety instructors “tune up” their process of instruction.

I not only feel let-down about the company policy – or lack of it on safety, but am also deeply concerned with the union’s role in safety today.

There is still a reluctance on the part of union to “scold” or “be open” or, yes, discipline its own members who flagrantly violate safety rules. The old school tie is just as dominant here as at any old conservative school. This is not in line with the teachings of IWA men like John T. Atkinson or Andy Smith, who devoted years to teaching sensible safety to their brothers. I spent some time on many podiums with them and sat after hours with them following a safety seminar. They were men who would not tolerate sheltering of a violation or nonsense by a manager. Where is their spirit today?

We must remember – if we are to be so-called leaders, big or small – that we must accept the responsibility of leadership. There is no one holding a knife at your back who says you must stay there.

That leadership is faltering right now in accident prevention in our logging industry. It will not be improved by top management continuing to completely delegate safety to the “on-the-job scene.” Nor will it be accomplished by unions hollering foul.

Let’s get rid of all these old ghosts that haunt us and make a new, sincere effort at a proper, co-ordinated safety program for this industry. The IWA and forest management have recently shown great new responsibility in labour negotiations. Some of the distrust is starting to wear off and let’s hope it continues.

Now we need a meeting of the minds of the people that direct – at the top, management and union – to discuss in calmness and in trust, the serious question of today’s accident prevention programs and safe production programs. Is that trust ready to move? Can the buck still be passed to the camp level? Tune in – 1990. We must remember.

Keep out of the bight,
Bill Moore

Click here to view this May 1980 British Columbia Lumberman article.

Bill Moore – logging contractor, forest industry statesman, community leader, health & safety advocate – was a prolific columnist who wrote about the challenges the west coast logging industry in many logging magazines including The British Columbia Lumberman and The Truck Logger. FWSN.org revisits some of Bill Moore's health and safety articles in an effort to both entertain and draw some perspective on how far we have come in addressing workers health and safety concerns over the last 30 years.
For additional background information on WD Moore Logging Ltd., visit their website at: http://www.wdmoore.ca/1bio.html

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THE MOMENT: A SAFETY DOCUMENTARY
This video was created for Western Forest Products in 2007 by zacwhyte.com and has been shared with forestry companies in dozens of countries around the world.

 For more... visit zacwhyte.com.                                                               [top]

The Forest Worker Safety Network regularly reviews logging videos on YouTube.com. The video below is our feature pick for this month. Click the video screen if you wish to enlarge the video for viewing on in new browser window on the Youtube.com website.  [top]

A Day in the Woods: Rigging a Tower for Power

FWSN.org continues with Part 4 of a video that documents the life of a rigging crew. This video feature is called "A Day in the Woods" and it shows the rigging crew as they continue to set up the steel tower on a sidehill. Walk with them into the surrounding timber as they notch the guyline stumps and listen as they talk shop with the rigging slinger. The video - recorded in 2008 - documents an American Washington State logging outfit and has six parts that feature some of the challenges that face a smaller family-run contracting company. But many of the rigging techniques are teh same found on the west coast of BC. Video Courtesy of FLOCKOIBROS.

Something to say about this video? Email us at: info@fwsn.org.