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The Burns Lake Pinnacle Pellet Mill Plant (Photo Credit: Pinnacle Renewable Energy)
WorkSafeBC has confirmed that it has sent a team of investigators to Burns Lake after a pellet mill explosion occurred Thursday morning.
According to Scott McCloy, Director of Government, Community and Media Relations, they received a call from the Burns Lake RCMP just after 9:00 a.m.
“Preliminary information indicates there are three injured workers but we don’t know the seriousness of those injuries in any way, shape or form at this point,” said McCloy. “WorkSafeBC has two prevention officers on route to the scene and they are due to arrive late this morning (Thursday). They are there to determine what happened and why and how such an event can be prevented in the future.”
In recently years WorkSafeBC has been extremely active in inspecting the pellet mill industry including the inspection of Pinnacle pellet mills, adds McCloy. Throughout the province Pinnacle has a number of pellet mills and WorkSafeBC has been actively involved with the mill in Burns Lake.
“Our safety initiative ran from April to mid-June this year and we had another safety initiative on October 1st of this year, so in the interim we have been actively involved in consulting and educating with the industry,” explains McCloy.”This is an industry that has some safety challenges and we are working actively with them and our concern is obviously for the well-being and safety of our workers.”
The mill is located about 16 kilometres east of Burns Lake on Highway 16 and it is near the location of the Hampton Affiliates sawmill that exploded in 2012. WorkSafeBC has not determined at this point if the explosion is combustible dust related or not, like in the 2012 explosion.
RCMP in Burns Lake has confirmed that the three people injured received serious, but non-life threatening injuries as a result of the fire. A total of 30 employees have been evacuated from the area and the mill has been shut down but area roads remain open.
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