The City of Edmonton is continuing with its suspension of all tunnelling activities at its work sites.
The temporary suspension was put in place Nov. 2, the day after a 44-year old city employee was killed underground while working on a sanitation sewer project.
“We’re waiting for findings from the provincial Occupational Health and Safety and internal OH&S investigations,” city spokesperson Holly Budd said in an email Wednesday.
There’s no information on when that will be complete, Budd said.
“If they hold off tunnelling for the next two to three weeks, two to three months, all the power to them,” said Mike Scott, president of Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 30.
“Let’s figure out whether it’s a systemic problem with the site, is it a systemic problem across all tunnel operations,” Scott said.
It’s important to know exactly what happened and how to prevent it from happening again, he said.
“It’s one of the most dangerous jobs we have within the city of Edmonton, ” he added.
A fence surrounding the City of Edmonton drainage sewer work site at Ellerslie Road and 142nd Street. (Lydia Neufeld/CBC)
The workers are 20 to 30 metres underground, moving sludge, and any time the tunnel boring machine moves forward the workers need to shore up the tunnel’s sides to prevent a collapse, he said.
Scott said it’s been 30 years since the last fatality in a tunnel.
“This [latest death] has deeply affected pretty much every member within the city of Edmonton,” he said.
While he didn’t know the man personally, Scott said he was with the crew that worked with him the day after the death, and it was a “tough day” for them.
“He was a great guy, always with a smile on his face,” Scott said co-workers told him.
All 100 members of the tunnelling, planning and construction unit are being paid while tunnelling work is suspended. Some have been doing other work for the city, Scott said.
The day that tunnelling work resumes will be a difficult one for workers, especially on the crew that lost a co-worker, he said.
“To return to that work site is going to be absolutely devastating, so let’s hope the city takes as much time as possible and lets these folks return to work when they are ready as well.”
A city employee was killed Nov. 1 while working with an underground tunnelling crew at a sanitation sewer project at Ellerslie Road and 142nd Street. (Lydia Neufeld/CBC)