After two catastrophic mill explosions since January, B.C. mills have been ordered to remove all accumulated sawdust from their premises.
There are two local mills – International Forest Products Limited’s (Interfor) in Grand Forks and Vaagen Brothers Lumber’s in Midway – and it has been several years since the last major accident in the Boundary.
WorkSafeBC issued an edict focusing on high levels of sawdust from the cutting of pine beetle damaged wood which was thought to be a possible trigger.
Russ Vaagen, co-owner of the mill in Midway (Vaagen Lumber has leased the land from Boundary Sawmills Inc. but own the equipment and buildings on site), has been anticipating the changes.
“It is certainly an unfortunate situation at both mills up north,” said Vaagen. “As soon as I heard about the fire at the Lakeland mill I knew that there would be some new regulations.”
Vaagen believes that the northern mills, which run almost exclusively on dry lodgepole pine logs, have exacerbated the dust issue.
“For the most part, logs that are green come into a mill at or near 50 per cent moisture,” he explained in an email. “When trees die, they sometimes begin to lose their water weight, making the wood dryer.”
Some of the forests in British Columbia have beetle-killed wood due to the invading mountain pine beetle, which is now considered a possible trigger for both blasts.
According to the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resources website, there is an action plan against the beetle infestation that is infecting much of B.C.’s forests.
“In the case of the beetle kill area, I have heard that they are regularly delivering logs that are below 19 per cent moisture content,” Vaagen added. “This is the moisture content target for lumber that has been kiln dried in the North American marketplace. This contributes to much more dry dust in the sawmills that run that wood.”
Vaagen noted that the mills in the Boundary area have some advantages when it comes to the dry dust.
“The first is that we run a much higher percentage of Douglas fir and western larch, up to 50 per cent,” he said. “Neither of these species are susceptible to the mountain pine beetle. The second thing that we have going for us is that the lodgepole pine in the area isn’t all dead and dying.”
Though Vaagen knows there are some areas that are affected by the pine beetle, it is to a much lower degree that the forests up in the north are facing.
“We haven’t done tests to look at what our percentages of dry to green wood are, but most of the lodgepole that we run is live when it is harvested,” he explained. “This leaves the wood white and bright and doesn’t result in much dry dust inside the mill. We also strive to keep a clean workplace. Making sure that there are not significant accumulations of sawdust and woody debris in the mill is a good business practice.”
Vaagen hopes that the regulations that result from these incidents are well thought out.
“(I hope it) helps to protect our workers and our mills from the dangers of fire without putting onerous limitations in place that make an already difficult business more costly,” concluded Vaagen. “We strive to keep our employees safe while working hard to produce high quality forest products.”
Interfor and WorkSafeBC were both contacted but had not responded as of press time.
In March, Interfor reported it was one-year lost-time accident free since Jan. 13, 2011.
Lost-time accidents are when production and the mill have to stop due to workplace injury.
Interfor was also ranked 14th out of 50 sawmills in British Columbia and has a medical incident rate (MIR) of 1.9.
This rank places Grand Forks’ sawmill second best in all of Interfor’s productions in B.C.
The first sawmill exploded in Burns Lake, claiming two victims, while the second sawmill leveled the Lakeland Mills in Prince George two weeks ago.
The explosion at Lakeland Mills killed two workers.
