Two dead in CNRL disaster
By RENATO GANDIA
Today staff
Wednesday April 25, 2007
FORT MCKAY — A steel structure that crashed at an oilsands construction site left two workers dead and four others injured Tuesday afternoon.
A senior official with the Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., the company building its Horizon project about 75 kilometres north of Fort McMurray, confirmed the deaths and injuries.
“Unfortunately we had fatalities at our worksite today, a very unfortunate incident at 2:28 p.m. at the Horizon site north of Fort McMurray. A roof support structure of a tank erection site on our project collapsed, causing two fatalities and four injuries,” Peter Janson, vice-president of integration, said late Tuesday afternoon by the gate of the construction site.
The site was immediately secured, and injured workers received appropriate medical attention and all authorities had been notified of the incident, Janson.
CNRL said in a statement late this morning that management is working with the contractor to notify next of kin.
Two of the injured workers were released from the hospital while two others were transfered to an Edmonton hospital.
The RCMP said they wouldn’t be releasing any statements or details.
An unidentified worker who witnessed the crash told Today that Chinese temporary labourers were working at the tank when the incident occurred.
“I heard this loud bang, like thunder, and then I saw the structure crashing, smashing and a whole bunch of steel was flying,” said the worker, who asked his name not be published. He added it was very windy on Tuesday at the site.
Linda Park, a spokeswoman for the province’s Occupational Health and Safety office, said details of the accident are still sketchy.
Safety officers take a long time to investigate because there are many witnesses to talk to and they don’t want to leave anything to chance, Park said.
She said it’s difficult to say at this point whether it was a mechanical failure or the wind that the collapse of the structure.
It is not yet known how long the construction site of the tank will be shut down, but police secured it Tuesday.
The company is mum about details, saying the case is still under investigation.
But Tim Brower, business manager with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 424, said he is “pretty sure there’s a foreign construction company (at the site) erecting the tank farm, a vessel used to contain bitumen.”
“We’re of the understanding that the erection of the tank farm was let out to a Chinese company. This goes back to six or eight months ago,” said Brower, adding he got the information from the Canadian Building Trades Department.
Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour, said he was told by two unions that have workers on site that the fatalities were Chinese workers.
“At this point we don’t know why the tank collapsed. We don’t know how many workers were inside. We don’t know the extent of the injuries of other workers,” McGowan said.
“What I was told was one of the workers died on site and one died while being transported to the hospital,” the labour leader added.
Cellphones of workers near the site of the accident were confiscated by management, McGowan was told.
“I wish I could say that I was surprised by the company’s decision to confiscate cellphones, but frankly that kind of thing happens all the time on work sites around the province,” he said.
Both Brower and McGowan called on the government to launch an inquiry into the accident.
Safety at the site may have been compromised due to communication barriers between English-speaking workers and non-English-speaking ones, Brower said.
“We’re calling for CNRL to give us all the information on this tragic accident. This is a tragedy. Safety standards in Canada have always been the highest,” the business manager said.
“We knew that it was just a matter of time that somebody was going to lose his life on this project. And that project is still in early stages. There’s still lots of hours to be worked on that site and I almost guarantee that if they do not call for an inquiry, find out exactly what happened, there will be more deaths on that CNRL site,” he added.
Park said it’s impossible to get many details so soon after the accident occurred and that it could take years to determine what exactly happened.
http://www.fortmcmurraytoday.com/
Two dead oilsands workers were Chinese citizens
Four injured also foreign workers
By CP
Wed, April 25, 2007
CALGARY — Energy company Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. is confirming that two workers killed Tuesday at its Horizon oilsands construction site in northern Alberta were Chinese citizens.
Real Doucet, the company’s senior vice-president of oilsands, says four other workers hurt in the accident were also foreign workers from China.
The accident occurred when the roof collapsed on a massive oil container being built as part of Canadian Natural’s $10.8-billion oilsands project north of Fort McMurray.
Canadian Natural says it’s unlikely that the fact the workers were Chinese had anything to do with the accident.
It says everyone on site has to be fully certified and adhere to strict safety rules.
Organized labour groups have railed against Canadian Natural for bringing in temporary foreign workers to help alleviate the costly labour shortage in northern Alberta.
http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/Alberta/2007/04/25/4129231.html
