A recovery-boiler explosion at a pulp mill in Peace River, Alta. on Sept. 22 has caused the facility to cease operations for the time being, but employees of the company that runs the mill are still working with full pay.

Nobody was injured in the incident at the Daishowa-Marubeni International Ltd. (DMI) pulp mill, according to Trent Bancarz, a spokesperson for Alberta Labour. The explosion occurred at about 1:30 p.m. that day, he added, and the boiler has been inoperable since then.

“We didn’t issue any stop-use or stop-work orders,” said Bancarz. “Our investigation continues, and we’ve also requested an investigation report from the company.”

Amber Armstrong, DMI’s communications and public-relations superintendent, told COHSN that the explosion had resulted from a smelt water leak in the recovery boiler, which is a ten-story-high unit.

“We had a team on that day that were responding to some indicators that our recovery boiler had some issues,” said Armstrong. “It was quickly determined that there was, in fact, a water leak.” The team immediately initiated emergency protocols and shut down the plant safely.

A recovery boiler produces a substance called black liquor, which turns into smelt, which can become explosive if it comes into contact with water, Armstrong explained. In this case, water leaked from one of the water tubes around the boiler that are intended to cool it down. “What ended up happening is, we had to cool down everything in the recovery boiler and then remove it, and then start looking at each of those water tubes.”

This was the first such incident that had ever happened at the mill, added Armstrong. “But we’re prepared for it,” she said, noting that the company walks through its emergency-response procedures on an annual basis.

“All of our operators, when I interviewed all of them,” she said, “I was like, ‘Were you scared? Were you this?’ And all of them said, ‘We were prepared. We knew when it was happening what to do, and we knew how to shut it down.’

“The training aspect of it over 28 years really kicked in.”

DMI reported the incident to Alberta Labour’s occupational health and safety division on the following day, Bancarz said. Oh&s officials will be visiting the mill to investigate the company’s response to the explosion, and the employer is investigating the incident as well.

“We have our own internal investigation,” said Armstrong, “to make sure we close any gaps. We understand it was an equipment failure, though. We know it’s not a failure related to any of our personnel.”

In the meantime, she added, all of the employees at the mill are still at work, even though the facility is shut down.

“We haven’t had any, and we’re not anticipating any, loss of manpower. We have brought in contractors,” said Armstrong. “Every other operational area in the mill has their own responsibilities that they’re undertaking. They’re doing area projects and cleanups and advancing on training.

“So as much as we hate to have anything affect our ability to produce pulp,” she said, “some of these other areas can really take some time and decrease some of their backlog.”

Bancarz could not determine whether DMI could face any oh&s charges over the incident. Alberta Labour’s current priority is just to investigate, he said.

“That decision’s made by Crown prosecutors, based on whatever facts we gather,” said Bancarz about laying charges. “To say there’d be charges or not would be pure speculation at this point.”

Founded in 1969, DMI is a forest-products company with facilities in Peace River and Quesnel, B.C., according to information from its website. Its corporate headquarters is in Vancouver.

A recent decision by the Ontario Labour Relations Board (OLRB) ruled in favour of a Toronto kindergarten teacher’s refusal to work in Jan. 2015, because of a student with a history of violent behaviour.

OLRB alternate chair Brian McLean stated that the second of the teacher’s two work refusals was justified, but dismissed the teacher’s appeal regarding the first refusal, according to McLean’s written decision, dated June 12 of this year.

“I am satisfied, based on the evidence, that the teacher had a genuine and honest concern about her safety,” wrote McLean. “The student had injured the teacher in a way that required her to go to the hospital. He had also injured other faculty and students. Regardless of his age and size, the student was a safety risk.”

The teacher, who was not named in the document, had already learned about the child’s tendency towards violence during the 2013-14 school year, before the student was enrolled in her senior kindergarten class, McLean wrote. In July 2014, after the teacher expressed her concerns about the student to the school principal, it was arranged that the student would be accompanied by a full-time education assistant (EA) in class.

But the student continued to behave violently towards other students and staff, including one incident in which he scratched the teacher’s face, including her eye, sending her to the hospital, according to the OLRB decision.

On Jan. 16, 2015, the EA was not present at the start of the class, and the student began acting out, first by striking another student. Later, after the EA’s arrival, the teacher took the rest of the students out of the classroom prematurely for music class in the library. “The teacher looked through the window in the door and saw the student kicking and hitting the EA,” wrote McLean. “The student threw things at the window and kicked and swore.”

The teacher advised the principal that she was exercising her right to refuse unsafe work. The principal and superintendent then decided to remove the student from her class for the day. But the teacher assumed that he was out of the class permanently and was surprised to see the student back in the classroom on the following Monday morning, Jan. 19.

“The teacher [told the principal] that she did not feel safe, since she was concerned about a violent outburst,” said McLean. “She felt unsafe because the student was unpredictable.”

In his decision, McLean stated that the Jan. 16 refusal was not justified because the province’s Occupational Health and Safety Act does not permit a teacher’s work refusal when the life, health or safety of a student is at risk. “It would have been easy for the student to hurt himself, given the way he was acting, in any number of ways, such as slipping and hitting his head on a desk or on the floor,” he wrote.

But McLean approved of the second work refusal on Jan. 19, as the teacher “had a genuine and reasonable fear that the student would engage in violence… and the employer had done nothing new to assist in dealing with the situation.”

He added that “it is unclear what more the employer could have done to protect the teacher” in the situation.

Disputes over safety continue to disrupt operations at the Windsor, Ont. location of Sterling Fuels Limited, as a recent refusal to work has caused the company to suspend work temporarily for most of the ship-offloading and -loading staff.

The initial incident occurred on April 5, when one employee refused to work on the dock because of work conditions perceived to be unsafe, according to Mike D’Agnolo, president of Unifor Local 444, the union that represents the workers.

“The company went up to all the other workers, and the other workers didn’t feel comfortable doing the work on the dock until they had confirmation that the work was safe,” explained D’Agnolo, who specified the reasons for the work refusals as “improper eyewash stations, improper showers and not a legitimate rescue plan in place if someone was to fall in the water.”

Following the refusals, Sterling contacted the Ontario Ministry of Labour, which sent a health and safety officer to the workplace to investigate the worksite shortly before Easter weekend. As of April 24, the company has not yet received the investigation results. In the meantime, Sterling has cancelled operations on the dock for the time being.

“Two of our workers are still currently working, loading and offloading trucks and providing the maintenance,” said D’Agnolo.

Joel Gardner, Sterling’s corporate health, safety and environmental manager, acknowledged that the layoffs had been connected to the work refusals.

“The other employees were asked if they would like to continue to refuel on the dock. They all refused, for various reasons,” said Gardner. “And as a result, there was just no work. So everybody was told, ‘We’ll call you if we have trucks that we can load.’”

Gardner added that the company is still unsure as to why the employees have refused to work on the dock. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” he said. “It’s a general ‘I feel unsafe.’”

For D’Agnolo, much of the problem stemmed from what he saw as an insufficient rescue plan for workers who fall into the Detroit River.

“We would like to see a rescue boat,” he said. “Some of the ships that we load and offload, their rescue boats are hanging over our dock. So they’re not deployable.” He speculated that if a worker fell into the river, another would dive into the water to rescue the first worker, thereby endangering both workers. “No one’s just going to watch a friend go down.”

What the employer expects, D’Agnolo continued, is that the employees will call an outside fire department to come to the rescue. “That could take anywhere from 15 minutes to 45 minutes.”

But Gardner claimed that Sterling had been investing in improved safety over the last two years, including recently buying a new work boat for rescue purposes.

“The season’s just starting, so we’re just installing the boat lift,” said Gardner. “But our main focus is to prevent people from actually falling into the water. So we’ve invested heavily in that, but we do have the work boat just in case someone falls in.”

He added that the company had invested about $250,000 in dock upgrades – “in particular, platforms being expanded and reinforced, we have fall protection, we’ve invested heavily in emergency response, lifesaving rings, boat hooks, throw bags.”

D’Agnolo conceded that Sterling had made efforts to improve safety at the Windsor facility. “They’re working right now to fix the facility to be the best facility around,” he said. “Have they fallen short in certain areas? Absolutely.

“At the end of the day, we have to make health and safety our priority for our members. They work next to the water. They work with fuel. There has to be a fire-contingency plan. There has to be rescue plans. This isn’t negotiable. This is Safety 101, in our eyes.”

“We’re trying to solve that problem as we speak,” Gardner said about the safety concerns.

“We’re not sure why it keeps coming up.”