Entrained worker escapes injury

COQUITLAM — Rescuers retrieved a worker unharmed, two hours after he was drawn into a sand storage bin at a ready-mix concrete plant in Coquitlam, British Columbia.

At about 10:30 am on June 1, two employees of the Rempel Bros. Concrete Ltd. facility were replacing metal “grizzly” grates on a storage bin when one worker was inadvertently drawn into the bin, says WorkSafeBC’s Donna Freeman.

The bin measures about three metres long, 2.4 metres wide and 4.5 metres deep, says Steve Szalkai, operations manager for Rempel Bros., a Langley, British Columbia-based company with eight locations across the province.

“The worker stepped onto a live sand pile [apparently to retrieve a cutting torch] and, that same moment, he stepped onto the sand pile in the bin,” Szalkai reports. The plant supervisor then “started loading a ready-mix truck and the worker got sucked into the inverted cone going down into the bin,” he says.

Szalkai reports that the worker was buried at least up to the waist, but was fortunate not to be injured. Paul Olson, assistant fire chief for Coquitlam Fire & Rescue, says firefighters used planks to shore up the excavation. A vacuum truck from the City of Coquitlam was later brought in to help retrieve the worker.

He was transported to hospital as a precautionary measure, before returning to work that same afternoon.

No compliance orders were issued, Freeman says, although provincial investigators were expected to take a look at communication issues, supervision and procedures related to work and lockout. “Lockout procedures clearly were an issue,” she points out.

Szalkai said at the time that company officials planned to carry out an educational effort in light of the incident.