Fatality trial told Sunshine lacked risk assessments

Sunshine Village not only didn't have written risk assessments in place for its staff until the weeks following a 2004 incident that claimed a 25-year-old lift maintenance worker's life, but only put procedures in place that would have saved him after the fact.

The revelation that the company had yet to complete the occupational health and safety requirement when Karl Stunt suffered head injuries while working on the Mt. Standish ski lift came out during the first four days of a trial against the company.

It was also revealed that radio communication procedures were created after he lost his life to make sure workers are being transported safely in the same work chair Stunt was in when he struck in the head.

Crown prosecutor Brian Caruk said a ski lift was transporting a two-tiered work platform with Stunt and another worker in it down the Standish lift on Aug. 31, 2004.

Caruk said an adjustable set of stairs were locked in an upright position and did not have enough clearance to pass under the lift's terminal at the bottom of the hill.

Lindsay Weidman was operating the ski lift that carried Stunt and fellow Sunshine Village employee Stephan Pigeon toward the terminal.

She testified she had never been provided, in writing, any training on what required speed a lift should be going with a work chair entering the terminal, whether a person should be sitting in its upper basket when it does so, or how the handrail or ladder should be positioned. The potential hazards of doing any of those actions were also not specifically given to her, she said.

"It was just common sense, I was told by my boss it should be down," Weidman said.

She also testified the work chair had previously run into the terminal when it was left along the lift line overnight, and in the morning an operator forgot or was not aware it was coming down with the handrail up.

"Crew members were laughing and joking about it," she said.

Caruk asked whether at any time after one of those instances Sunshine Village held a safety meeting or communicated to staff the potential hazard and possibility of fatal injuries from such a situation. Weidman and Pigeon both testified no such meeting ever occurred.

Weidman recounted what happened that day when she started the lift to move Stunt and Pigeon from one tower to another to perform maintenance duties.

As the pair approached the terminal she said she called out to Pigeon to ask where he wanted the work chair to stop, but could not hear his response.

"I stepped back in the (lift) shack right beside the stop button and that is when I heard and saw the work chair crash... it was violently twisting," Weidman said through tears. "I looked up ... there was blood coming from everywhere and I didn't know what to do."

Defence lawyer Paul Brennan cross-examined Weidman at length about her training as a journeyman millwright since she began at Sunshine in 1999. On the day of the incident she was a first-year apprentice.

She testified that through on-the-job training as an apprentice she was aware the work chair's handrail must be in a downward position. A sign on the work chair even states as much, noted Brennan.

He asked her why she did not stop the chair before it hit the terminal but Weidman couldn't answer, saying she had been paying attention to Pigeon and didn't notice Stunt in the upper part of the carrier or the handrail upright.

"Your job as an operator is you have to stop a lift if there is a problem, if you see something wrong," Brennan said. "You have no explanation about why you did not notice something that was never supposed to happen."

Occupational Health and Safety lead investigator Karen Kenny testified regarding the evidence she collected from the scene.

Kenny said the operation and maintenance manual for the ski lift said not to operate it carrying a work platform through the terminal at more than 150 feet per minute, or 0.75 metres per second. It also stated not to transport a platform without the supervision of a lift operator.

She said it was her understanding, after interviewing witnesses, that at the time of the incident the lift was operating at 2.5 metres per second or 500 feet per minute.

Brennan asked Kenny if she knew what happens usually when a ski lift enters the terminal. She said she had never been on a lift before.

"As it comes into the terminal it detaches and goes onto a different cable," Brennan said. "That cable goes quite slowly to allow people to get on and off."

He suggested the lift was actually travelling at less than 100 feet per minute.

"Through my observations, statements and information collected it was going faster than that," Kenny said.

Brennan also pointed to the fact that Occupation Health and Safety requirements changed that year in April to require employers to have written hazard assessments on equipment.

Kenny testified all risk assessments she obtained through her investigation were dated as of September, 2004 - after the incident.

Contractor Simon Schantz told the court during the second day of the trial that he was sitting on the flatbed of a truck facing downhill and the Standish terminal when he saw the work chair heading towards it.

"When they were just about to come into the station I thought to myself, 'something is wrong'," Schantz said. "As soon as they entered the chair lift was when I heard metal breaking and (Stunt) disappeared."

He said Stunt was sitting on the top level of the work platform and there did not, in his opinion, appear to be enough clearance or head room.

Sunshine faces charges under the Occupational Health and Safety Act for failing to ensure the health and safety of its workers, failing to ensure workers were trained in the safe operation of equipment, failing to ensure the assessment and identification of hazards on the worksite and failing to ensure equipment was operated in accordance with the manufacturer's specifications.

The maximum penalty for a first offence under the act is $500,000 fine and or six months in prison for each charge. It is the first time charges have been laid in Alberta against a ski hill.