Logging fatality study reveals that fallers

and skidder operators are most fatal jobs

e Study looked at 265 fatality claims in the industry between 1983-1994.

Workers’ Compensation Board of

British Columbia released it “Re-
port of Fatalities in the Logging Indus-
try.” The report which arose because
of demand from the WCB’s Logging
Industry Safety Forums two years ear-
lier, gives a detailed look at death in
the industry from 1983 to 1994.

The report examines groups of log-
ging fatalities in that time frame in at-
tempt to find answers which can lead
to a better prevention strategy.

“This is a very important study for
us as a union,” say IWA-CANADA Na-
tional First Vice President Neil
Menard. “Our occupational health and
safety committee officers and com-
mittee member should be aware of
what the report has to say.”

n September of last year the
Preservation Division of the

Falling is by far the most Mangers
category with the most fatalities,

Brother Menard, the union's nation-
al officer responsible for health and
safety, says the report gives a thor-
ough statistical analysis and break-
down of logging fatalities and makes
some solid recommendations, many
of which the IWA has been calling for
years. More details on that later on in
this article.

Between 1983 and 1994 there were
290 fatality claims in the forest indus-
try. However 265 of them were inves-
tigated by the WCB and became part
of this report. The other 25 were log-
ging truck accidents which were in-
vestigated under the Motor Vehicle
Branch.

The report also looks into related
data and studies into consideration. It
looks at a University of British Colum-
bia Study on Falling and Bucking fa-
talities between 1981-87, a report of
the Logging Industry Safety Forum
Steering Committee, and a study on
logging fatalities (1980 - 1988) in the
U.S. which was funded by the Journal
of Safety Research.

When looking at the breakdown of
fatalities into job categories, fallers
have the worse record with a stagger-
ing 93 fatalities or 35% of the total
deaths investigated. The study re-
vealed that the hazards to falling are
mostly bad falling practices where
workers are struck by trees, working
too close, or being struck by cut up
trees.

Then second worse category is
skidder operators with 36 deaths, or
about 14% of total fatalities investigat-
ed. Of all of these deaths, 19 were in
cases where the operator failed to use
their seatbelts. In only 9 of the 36 fa-
talities was their references to steep
terrain, which suggest that most of
the operators were lax with seatbelts
on ground were there wasn’t as much
roll-over hazard.

Log truck drivers have a high mor-
tality rate both in and out of camp.
The average age of the 24 deaths stud-
ied was 41.8 years with 17.2 experi-
ence,

Fatalities for hooktenders have
dropped, says the study, mainly due to

improved technology, although there
were 4 of the total 13 fatalities in
1993. The average age for hooktender
deaths is 36.7 years with 13.1 years
experience.

In other categories the average age
of rigging slingers was 25.9 years with
3.4 years experience. For chokermen
the average was 3.6 years of experi-
ence and 24.4 years of age.

The report looked at the UBC study
on fatalities in falling, there were
traces of alcohol in only 4 deaths and
those traces were under the legal limit
for intoxication. Of the 76 fatalities in
the study, one revealed cannabis and
one showed sign of other drugs. Since
that 1987 study, there has been only
one other case of probable substance
abuse.

The UBC study also notes that there
are two age and experience groups
where there are a peak in fatalities
which occur. One is for faller between
25-30 years of age that have less than
5 years experience. The other is for
workers aged 45-50 years that have 20
to 25 years experience.

The study discussed and suggested
that lack of training and experience
may have been a factor for the first
group, while loss of agility due to age
may have been a factor in the 45-50
year old age group.

The overwhelming number of fatali-
ties have occurred in small firms. For
years the union has attributed this to
lack of proper safety programs in
these operations. This has been no-
ticed by other organizations as well.

The National Institute of Occupa-
tional Health and Safety has also iden-
tified employees of smaller outfits as
having a greater risk of fatalities.

The WCB coordinated Logging In-
dustry Safety Industry Forum report
has made serious recommendations
to boost safety programs in the small-
er operations. It recommends that the
WCB Prevention Division have more
contact to provide education, consul-
tation and enforcement of existing
regulations and for it to develop and
distribute more safety related infor-
mation, specifically for small compa-
nies. The Forum also suggests that
initiatives be taken to guarantee to
small outfits have effective safety pro-
gram in which a license be required.

The report analyses a list of logging
fatalities for 1991-1993 revealed that

most of logging fatalities occur in the
Northern Interior region of the
province and in coastal logging opera-
tions. In these regions, most of the an-
nual logging activity is jammed into a
shorter time period, where the logging
is done by mostly small firms.

REPORT RECOMMENDATIONS

The WCB Prevention Division sug-
gests that several intervention strate-
gies be invoked. They include the
following measures:

e a media campaign to increase
awareness for workers, primarily in
small companies.

¢ an increased effort to train, educate,
and enforce safety in small compa-
nies.

The report makes
many of the recom-
mendations that the

IWA has been de-
manding for years

° a focus of increased resources in the
logging sector, particularly in the
northern region.

° increase training and education for
specific jobs.

° new strategies to make sure that
joint occupational health and safety
programs are put into place through
proper licensing agencies and through
parent companies and contractors.

e increased collaboration between
government, labour and forest indus-
try employers to put prevention
strategies into place (i.e. Forest Code
Practices Standards, training pro-
grams with Forest Renewal B.C. and
development of a slope stability as-
sessment program).

e enforcement of safety standards
through penalties and possible crimi-
nal charges for violators.

e increased efforts to follow-up on
recommendations from the Logging
Industry Safety Forum.

¢ Skidder operators statistically have one of the most dangerous jobs in the
woods. Many fatalities do not happen on steep terrain.

8/LUMBERWORKER/MARCH, 1995

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