by Tod Strachan

Raymond Beaudette was nearly
half way through a day of direct-
ing traffic at the Thornhill sanitary
landfill, Most teens might have
found more entertaining things to

' doon. a September Sunday after-
- noon. Heat, smoke, mud, dust, rain ©
and the inescapable odour of other

people’s waste were among the

* highlights of a day’s work at the
_ dump. Not the kind of environment
- where many would choose to

linger.
But at 16, Raymond was more

. than willing to accept the responsi-

bility of a shift at the dump. His

‘father, Dennis Beaudette, had the

contract for.maintaining the site,
and in spite of what some may
think, it was important work. Most
people think of a garbage dump as
a place to drop anything and
everything you don’t want.

Few care or distinguish between
normal household wastes, wood,

an unknown liquid that might be

- too hazardous to keep around the

home.
Besides, if it hadn’t been Ray-

mond’s tum to keep an eye on.
things, his father or one of his two”

brothers would have been doing
the work. Someone had to be
there. And it wasn’t as though he

was alone. It was a busy day and J

his brothers, 14-year-old Leonard
and 17-year-old Roger, were

Terrace Review — Wednesday, February 20, 1991 Al5

"hanging around" just in case he jie

needed a hand.

Dennis Beaudette put the key in

the ignition of his vehicie, started

the engine, and began driving
towards ‘the Thornhill dump. He -#

trusted the boys. But he believed it
was good-policy to check on them
from time-to-time anyway... Justin

case, Dennis understood the com-

plexities and hazards of the job.
He recalled one incident in which

a Thornhill resident was depositing |

unmarked, sealed metal containers
at the landfill. "It’s only soap,” he
was told, Later, however, one of
the containers was accidentally

way is tiring, as well

falling over backwards.

you.

‘SKI TIPS from Tim Foster,
Shames Skier Services manager

Run with your skis,
not against them!

Moving down the hill is the main goal of skiing.
Still, many skiers are reluctant to do it, especially
as the terrain gets steeper. They choose to ride
their skis rather than run with them. Skiing this

unsound. It’s hard to turn the skis when most of
your muscles are working to prevent you from

Run with your skis by moving your body up and
forward at the beginning of the turn. This does not
mean ’lean forward’, but simply ’keep up with
your skis as they move into the turn’. You should
feel like you’re pulling the skis down the hill with

Running with your skis is an aggressive way of
skiing. It keeps you on top of your skis, and results
in far less fatigue and improved control.

REMEMBER: 638-8SKI for 24-hr snow reports.

» After an exhilerating

We treat you right!

@ US. Pat. Off, Am. 0. Corp Copyright, 1980 Am DO. Corp, Mpls, MN Printed in U.S.A

as being mechanically

SKI TIPS is sponsored by
Dairy Queen

day of skiing
at Shames,
drop in to

Dairy Queen
for a Royal Treat!

parked container marked the beginning of a tragedy

| paper, rusty nails, broken glass or

Terrace firefighters and volunteers and Thornhill volunteer firefighters gave up much of their
weekend to help subdue a stubbom fire that erupted at the Terrace landfill. Such fires can be
dangerous because unidentified material can explode or suddenly ignite, causing injury to anyone
nearby — as in the case of Roger Beaudette. The fire took several days and thousands of gallons

of water to extinguish.

punctured by the bucket of the
front end loader and caustic fumes
made it impossible for the operator
to breathe. The operator retreated
quickly... The liquid in those con-
tainers was not soap; it was never
identified.

Raymond was glad his brothers
bad decided to "hang around’. It
was busy — even for a Sunday
aftemoon — so Roger and Leonard
had begun to help by keeping a
closer cye on things.

The boys had already noticed an
unusual odour in the air; an odour
of an unidentifiable but definitely
inflammable liquid. It wasn’t long
before the searching eyes of one
spotted two five-gallon metal con-
tainers that had been left in an area
where they shouldn’t have been;
close to a pile of brush. They
investigated. One of the containers
was leaking, allowing its contents
to spill onto the ground.

The boys knew this was a vio-
lation of one of those provincial
regulations, and they also knew
what to do. A 15-gallon drum was
always kept at the site just for this
type of occurrence. They immedi-
ately began a routine they had
done many times before; transfer-
ring an unidentified, probably
hazardous liquid from leaking cans
into the safety of an approved
container.

There was a slight snag on this
occasion, however. A snag that
may have saved both their lives.
Roger poured the contents of one
of the cans into the drum, but half
of the second container’s contents
filled the other 15-gallon drum.

- They would need another con-

tainer.

Raymond, busy directing traffic,
heard something like the sound of
a propane barbecue being lit, Dis-
tracted from the task at hand, he
turned, and was horrified to see the
clothing of his younger brother in
flames. Roger wasn't in sight.

Raymond acted instinctively.
There was a blanket close at hand
and he quickly smothered the
flames. Leonard’s burns were not

serious. But what had happened?
And where was Roger? Hearing
activity on the opposite side of a
nearby van, Raymond began to
move. He wasn’t prepared, though,
for what he was about to see.

Two people had spotted Roger at
about the same time Raymond was
snuffing the burning clothes of his
younger brother. They, however,
didn’t have a blanket and had
grabbed the first thing they could
find. No one seems certain just
what they grabbed. Their idea was
correct and, their intentions good...
but they had wrapped Roger’s
burning body in something made
of a synthetic or plastic material.

Someone else was running
towatds the scene, apparently an
off-duty or retired nurse. "Get the
plastic off him," she screamed. But
it was too late. Efforts to remove
the material were far more damag-
ing than helpful. Gobs of melted
plastic tore burned flesh from the
boy’s body with each attempt to
remove it.

The woman who had issued the
warning knew Roger’s situation
was serious. There was no time for
an ambulance. He needed medical
attention immediately. She rushed
the three boys into her car and
headed for Mills Memorial Hospi-
tal.

At the same time, Dennis was
nearing the entrance to the Thorn-
hill landfill site. About 100 yards
from the tum-off, he saw a car
pull out and head in his direction.
The vehicle was unfamiliar, but
people were waving their hands
out the window, "They must know
me," he guessed. But the reflection
of sunlight on the windshield hid
the occupants of the car.

Something was unusual, but
Dennis had no sense of any great
disaster, The boys were nowhere
to be seen... "A couple of kids
were burned," he was told. It
didn’t sound like anything serious,
though. There was no evidence
that anything had gone seriously
wrong... Other than the fact a pile
of brush that had been there for

several months was now burning.

He phoned his wife, Fem, using
the radio-telephone in his vehicle.
Two boys had been bumed, he
told ber. He guessed it had been
their own because they were not
on the job, and would she drive to
the hospital and check it out.

With that done, Dennis addressed
the problem of the buming brush.
Using the front end loader, he
dumped a half dozen loads of
gravel on the brush until the fire
was under control. With cach load,
he drove by an open: 5-gallon
Inetal pail that appeared from the
height of the loader to be filled
with water.

"I was going to stop and bury it,
but I didn’t want to get down from
the loader," he recalls today. "But
one time I touched it with the
bucket and there was a lot of black
smoke. The flame was so clear I
couldn’t even see it. So I touched
it again, and there was a lot of
black smoke... So I buried it with
the loader."

The cause of the explosion may
never be known. Some say one of
the boys was smoking a cigarette
at the time. Others say this is not
true... None of the boys were

‘smoking at the time. It is much

more likely, they say, that fumes
from the evaporating liquid even-

‘tually reached a "hot spot" in the

pile of brush and ignited.

Which of these suggested
scenarios is true, however, may not
be as important as the source of
the explosive substance itself,
Someone, carelessly and illegally,
left a inflammable substance sitting
at the dump.

The resulting explosion could
have injured or killed anyone who
used the dump that day.

The first section of this series
about Roger Beaudette’s accident
and the hazards of working with
unidentified substances in landfills
appeared in the Feb, 6, 1991 issue
of the Terrace Review. The final
installment will be printed next
week,