Brian B Humphreys

No Smoke Without Fire Brian B Humphreys

The Smelter explosion in the early hours of Aug 8th 2000 became a watershed moment for the company, its employees, family members and all residents of Flin Flon. Like 9/11, nothing would ever be the same again.

We must always be open to rethinking the way we do things. Change must be constant. To go to work each day without getting hurt has to be an expectation we all have.

In Flin Flon, the last fatality prior to the smelter explosion had been five years earlier. That had been the longest period between fatalities in the company's history.

There has not been a work - related fatality in the 19 years since the explosion, but that is not to say the battle to create a harm-free workplace has been won.

We could so easily have had fatalities many times over the years. Sometimes the outcome was a question of sheer luck or twist of fate, a matter of inches, or seconds making the difference between life and death.

It is all the more important to revisit and communicate the important lessons learned from them.

I have included many of them in the second part of this book under "Work Shouldn't Hurt" along with other examples I have experienced in my 49 years in the work force.

Lessons can be learned every day. They can apply to everyone who goes to work. It doesn't matter if you are a CEO, Manager, supervisor or worker, everyone is an important cog in the wheel.

Examples given and discussions throughout this book are not intended to demean or point a finger at any individual, group or company. They are purely used as learning opportunities to help people recognize and understand that sometimes it is only incredible luck or good fortune that they don't end up seriously injured, or even killed.

The examples are mostly centred around heavy industry, but many similar occurrences lay dormant in many workplaces, and even outside the work environment.

To reiterate, this book is not about blame or finger pointing. It is an attempt to capture and understand the circumstances that led up to the explosion and what goes into a recipe for such a disaster.

Seldom is anything made from one ingredient. Similarly, a disaster is usually triggered by more than one single event or "ingredient".

The fatality list that is included in this book demonstrates the tremendous sacrifice employees have made over the history of Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting. Many workplace safety and health regulations have been implemented as a direct result of lessons learned.

The list does not cover the tremendous number of accidents that did not result in death but did inflict life-changing injuries.

Every name on the list represents a son, brother, uncle, husband or father, and many represent every single one of those relationships, which left wives without husbands, children without dads.