Ontario Construction News staff writer
Siding design and installation company John Kenyon Limited of Hamilton has been fined $225,000 after two workers were fatally injured on April 25, 2023, at the Stelco Lake Erie Works in Nanticoke.
The Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development Ontario in a news release said the incident occurred when the defendant “failed to take the reasonable precaution to ensure the workers were not performing work on a quench tower while the quenching process took place, contrary to the Occupational Health and Safety Act.”
The defendant pled guilty and was convicted on March 3 in the Ontario Court of Justice.
The release said that during siding replacement work on the quench tower undertaken by Kenyon the coke oven remained in operation with the trolley car automatically transporting hot coke to the tower. (A coke oven is a specialized furnace where coal is heated to produce coke for steel production.) For every quench, the Kenyon workers would ensure their safety by moving the boom lift used in the siding work a safe distance away.
On the day of the incident, two workers were in the basket of the lift approximately 40 feet off the ground. Two other workers at ground level assisted by signalling when the workers in the boom lift needed to move away from the tower.
As the coke oven operation started, the Kenyon workers acknowledged a signal by the ground crew but did not move the boom away as warned. They still did not move the boom after a second signal.
The ground workers did not engage the emergency controls to move the basket away from danger. When the trolley car automatically parked itself at the base of the tower, the ground crew began shouting to the boom lift workers to get the basket away from the tower and sounded a horn.
After 30,000 gallons of water poured onto the hot coke in the trolley car, steam rose up the quench tower and escaped through the gap in the external wall being worked on. This resulted in fatal injuries to the two workers on the lift.
An investigation by the Ministry of Labour determined that Kenyon did not ensure that its workers followed the Stelco safety procedure correctly. The two deaths would have been avoided if the workers had made sure to move the basket away from the quench tower at the first signal.
