Industrial Fire Prevention

From British Columbia - CBC News Quesnel mill explosion could have been deadly Dust may be factor in explosion and fire By Betsy Trumpener, CBC News Posted: Mar 10, 2016 4:48 PM PT Last Updated: Mar 10, 2016 5:01 PM PT Safety officials say a fire and explosion at West Fraser's WestPine MDF plant, Wednesday, could have been catastrophic. (Erika Steinson/Facebook) A fire and explosion Wednesday at a Quesnel mill could have been catastrophic and deadly, says Al Johnson, Vice President of Prevention Field Services for WorkSafeBC. Thirty workers inside  West Fraser's WestPine MDF  plant were evacuated safely. It took crews almost five hours to put out the fire. Potential for serious injuries, death "There was the potential here for being catastrophic," said Johnson. "We're very fortunate there were no injuries. There was a potential for workers to be seriously injured or wor...

From the Vancouver Sun Progress made in controlling wood dust in mills, agency reports   Scrutiny continues on industry after deadly wood dust-fuelled explosions in 2012 By Gordon Hoekstra, Vancouver Sun February 25, 2015 Smoke rises from the burned out Babine Forest Products mill in Burns Lake in January 2012. Photograph by: JONATHAN HAYWARD, THE CANADIAN PRESS The B.C. sawmill industry is making progress in controlling potentially explosive wood dust, but monitoring will continue, says WorkSafeBC.   The chief agency responsible for workplace safety issued only three orders for wood dust problems during the latest inspection period between Oct. 1, 2014 and Jan. 31 that involved 117 sawmills. The results, however, cannot be compared to those from the four previous inspection rounds when dozen of orders were issued because this time WorkSafeBC gave companies that had a good wood dust safety record the option of conducting their own daily inspec...

From Woodworkingnetwork.com "Combustible sawdust turned up in unacceptable levels in 48 of 83 wood and forest products plants inspected..."   Plywood, Wood Plant ComDust Investigations Top Week's Reports Combustible sawdust turned up in unacceptable levels in 48 of 83 wood and forest products plants inspected in British Columbia this summer, says the Vancouver Sun newspapers. While the government agency WorkSafeBC had been inspecting sawmills and later plywood, pulp and secondary wood products firms, the newspaper's freedom of information request  named names and forced more public disclosure by the agency. Plywood firms ( West Fraser and Tolko are just two examples) were ordered to clean up; as well as secondary wood products manufacturers (some examples are C&C Wood, Teal Cedar, and Northern Engineered Wood Products). A complete list is at this link. Combustible dust explosions racked two British Columbia sawmills earlier this year, killing...

From  WorkSafeBC.com  Here is an article about the BC Mountain Pine Beetle tree mill explosions and a resource for mills creating combustible wood dust. The link below is a list of resources and the last one is referenced in the story. Industry resources From WorkSafeBC WorkSafeBC combustible dust strategy - Phase 1 (sawmills) Bulletin – Cleanup of Hazardous and Combustible Dust Best Practices Sawmill Dust Control Workgroup From industry Joint industry communiqué on mill safety Wood Dust in Sawmills - Compilation of Industry Best Practices  

One B.C. pellet mill blast went unreported From The Vancouver Sun: Five explosions preceded deadly incidents in Burns Lake, Prince George Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/sawmill+blast+went+unreported/6550344/story.html#ixzz1uNfhMnMq A wood dust explosion 16 months ago that blew apart a small control room and started a fire at a Williams Lake sawmill went unreported to WorkSafeBC, the chief workplace safety agency in the province. The incident was among five explosions news reports linked to wood dust in north and central B.C. between 2009 and 2011 that took place before two fatal sawmill explosions this year at Babine Forest Products in Burns Lake and Lakeland Mills in Prince George. WorkSafeBC also said it has no record of an explosion in 2011 at a Pinnacle Pellet plant in Armstrong. WorkSafe inspectors and industry representatives have not directly linked the two fatal sawmill explosions, which killed four workers and injured dozens more, to w...