Bloor Street Explosion – 10 Years Ago Today (April 24)

Dora Carambelas, Tina Kirkimtzis, Robert Fairley, Irene Miyama, Adele Brown, Elizabeth Roy, and Lillian Guglietti; those are the names of the seven people who lost their lives 10 years ago today as a result of utility locate issues.  Today marks the anniversary of the Bloor Street Explosion.  In summary, a problem related to obtaining appropriate locates was the cause of a tremendous explosion at a strip plaza on Bloor Street in the Six Points area of Etobicoke on April 24, 2003.  The incident caused the complete destruction of the plaza and the loss of life for seven people in the plaza.  As a result of the incident, investigations and court proceedings led to the eventual conviction of the excavation company, the utility locator, and Enbridge with penalties of $1.4 million in total.  There are a number of articles in our blog related to this incident and more information in the Locate Resources section of our website.

Interestingly, one of the guilty pleas was for “failing to adequately supervise an employee in the implementation of the locate process”.  This plea should be of interest to environmental and geotechnical consulting firms.  It could have implications for firms ensuring their employees are properly trained with respect to utility locates when they are managing site investigations with drillers.

Five years after the explosion, a memorial garden and plaque were unveiled at the residential/commercial building that was constructed to replace the destroyed plaza.

Over the last 10 years since the explosion that levelled the plaza and killed seven people, there has been increased awareness of utility locate issues, modification to the Occupational Health and Safety Act to improve wording in the construction regulation, and just last year an entirely new Act (Ontario Underground Infrastructure Notification System Act), and we still have people requesting us to drill when they do not have complete locates.

Car-Drill Collision

Sadly, the vehicle driver was killed, when his car struck this drill working along a road east of Toronto.  Drillers and field personnel from the consulting company were also reportedly injured.  Although the cause of the crash is under investigation, the photo is a stark reminder of the importance of an adequate traffic control plan for sites where vehicular traffic is present.  Book 7, the Ontario Traffic Manual (Temporary Conditions) must be consulted in order properly prepare for drilling on or near roadways.  The pdf version can be downloaded by clicking Book 7.  The story of this crash can be found by clicking Car-Drill Collision

Locates Cartoon

If you read Drill Bits magazine or saw our previous article about Chuck Rench and Kelly Barr, you are familiar with the characters presented by the National Drilling Association (NDA) promoting safe drilling practices.  Based on our suggestion, the NDA used Chuck and Kelly to promote the utility locate the message.  This cartoon was published in the Fall 2011 edition of the magazine.

Self Auditing

Kodiak has developed a new component for our Health & Safety Management System.  The Site Safety Performance Audit process involves a surprise visit to a drilling site by a Kodiak co-worker to complete an assessment of the performance of the crew at the site.  This process is very brief and will not significantly impact the activities of the drill crew at the site.  The auditor will conduct a brief inspection of the site for safety related issues, in addition to asking the drillers and field personnel a few brief questions.  Items reviewed as part of this process include PPE, utility locates, traffic control, tailgate meetings, equipment inspection, site constraints, among other items.  If you have any questions or concerns about the process, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Ministry of Labour Video

Although this is not directly related to drilling, knowing that many of our clients are also involved with excavations for soil remediation or construction projects, we have enclosed a link below to a Ministry of Labour YouTube video on excavation safety.

Watch the video

The Source

Safety is a key feature of the Fall 2011 edition of The Source, a publication of the Ontario Ground Water Association (OGWA).  Our feature article from a 2010 newsletter entitled Drilling Is Not Dangerous caught the attention of OGWA and was published in the magazine.  The article can be found in the safety section of our articles or in the magazine.  We applaud OGWA for encouraging safety within the groundwater industry.  More information about the Ontario Ground Water Association can be found by clicking OGWA.

We would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate our colleague Dave Gunn of Geo-Environmental Drilling who will be taking over the presidency of OGWA.  Dave is well known in our industry as a proponent of safe drilling practices in environmental and geotechnical drilling.

Charged and Convicted

From the legal files, we have a recent conviction and some new charges:

Convicted

October 2011 – An Employer and supervisor pleaded guilty to a charge under section 228(1)(a) of Ontario Regulation 213/91 resulting in fines of $20,000 and $2,500 respectively.  This was the result of an incident investigation from April 2010 where workers hit a 1 ¼” natural gas line while excavating at a residence in St. Catharines.  It was determined that locates were not performed prior to beginning the excavation.

May 2011 – Two employers on the same project plead guilty to charges under section 228(1)(a) of Ontario Regulation 213/91 and received fines of $6500 and $20,000.  This was the result of an incident investigation from August of 2008 where a gas line was cut during and excavation for an electrical duct at an institutional project in Milton.

Charged

October 2011 – A worker was issued a summons – issued under section 228(1)(b) of O. Reg. 213/91 (a section related to utility locates).  We will stay tuned to see if this worker is convicted.

Follow up

A follow up to our article regarding private locates and the explosion that killed one person near Owen Sound – In reviewing Ministry of Labour Court Bulletins, we came across the guilty plea of the construction company with a an imposed fine of $225,000.  The press release can be found by clicking press release.  As a reminder, this incident involved a house where private locates had not been completed.  More information can be found in our Feature Article on private locates at houses in the utility locate section of our articles.

Ministry of Labour Court Bulletins can be found by clicking Court Bulletins.

Information courtesy Ontario Ministry of Labour

TSSA Guidelines for Excavations

The TSSA document “Guidelines For Excavations In The Vicinity of Gas Lines” November 2004 has recently been updated.  For the update, TSSA worked with the Electrical Safety Authority (ESA) to produce a new document to harmonize the requirements with the electrical utility requirements.  The new document  “Guidelines For Excavations In The Vicinity of Utility Lines” is available from the TSSA by clicking here. 

The document is relatively short and easy to read.  We would strongly encourage all project managers and field technicians who are contracting drillers, undertaking construction excavations, or overseeing remediation excavations to review this information.

Specific attention should be given to Section 2.0:

Prior to excavation the person responsible for the work shall contact “Ontario One Call” at the telephone or facsimile numbers listed in Table 1 below, or the utility, and request a locate of utility lines in the areas where excavation will be taking place. The Excavator must receive the locate as described in Section 3.0 prior to commencing any excavation.

Consultants should be aware that the phrase “…. person responsible for the work…..” clearly identifies them as the responsible party should there be any problem with incomplete locates.  We always find it surprising that consultants show us the locates and then ask “are these okay with you?”, as if we are some sort of an approval authority.  If a consultant is taking on the responsibility for the excavation, shouldn’t they satisfy themselves that they know what it means to have proper and complete locates and govern their actions accordingly?

Over $1 million Fines

In a previous post, we indicated that a new trial had been ordered for Enbridge in the Bloor Street explosion.  For those who have forgotten, this was an explosion that leveled a building and killed 7 people because the utility locates were not completed properly.  We have posted below, information from that release as well as a link to the full press release.  As outlined, the fines related to this incident now total over $1 million.  We have heard rumors that a full inquiry may be the next step in this saga.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (Toronto, ON, December 16, 2011) – Enbridge Gas Distribution Inc. pled guilty to a charge under the Technical Standards and Safety Act, 2000 (the Act) for its role in a natural gas explosion on April 24, 2003 at 3887 Bloor St. West in Toronto that killed seven people, seriously injured four others, destroyed a two-story commercial and residential building, and caused extensive damage to adjacent properties.

The Ontario Provincial Offences Court imposed a fine of $350,000 plus a 25% victim surcharge of $87,500 for a total fine of $437,500 against Enbridge for failing to provide as accurate information as possible regarding the location of underground natural gas pipelines as required under the Act.

To read the full news release, please click here

Burnaby Oil Pipeline

It is not likely that people remember the news specifically from July 24, 2007, but anyone involved in drilling work surely had shivers going down their spine watching the news clips of the Burnaby neighbourhood covered in a thick layer of 234,000 litres of crude oil as the result of a pipeline strike.  Truly a case of a picture being worth a thousand words; if you google “Burnaby oil spill photo” you will see some startling photos.  Anyone who sees those photos would certainly not attempt a drilling project without getting proper locates.

The Transportation Safety Board issued their report in March 2009 which discusses the facts about the incident and some conclusions of the reasons for its occurrence.  In the “Findings as to Causes and Contributing Factors”, the second of the 6 points particularly caught our attention:

“2. Since the location of the Westridge Pipeline was not verified along Inlet Drive, as required under the crossing agreement and the National Energy Board Pipeline Crossing Regulations, Part I, the discrepancy between its location, as shown on the design drawings, and its actual field location was not discovered before the start of construction.”

In other words, they did not have proper locates !  In other areas of the text it refers to personnel relying on drawings instead of locates and the drawings being incorrect.  Kodiak has been requested many times to drill on the basis of design or as-built drawings instead of proper locates.  We wouldn’t do it then, and we sure wouldn’t do it now, after this incident.  Some resources on this topic are provided below:

click on this link, if you would like to see first hand, what can happen if your locates are not complete.  Some other interesting links are below:

Transportation Safety Board report
Dianne Saxe blog posts on the topic
CBC report on the incident