British Columbia’s workers’ safety agency says construction crane accidents have become “a huge concern,” as it announced a fourth such incident this year in Metro Vancouver.
WorkSafeBC says it is calling industry and labour groups together for a “collaborative effort” to ensure safety, including discussions on proposed legislation that would require any major operation involving cranes to give the agency two weeks’ notice.
The action comes after an accident involving a construction crane at a work site in Vancouver on Monday (March 4), where WorkSafeBC has issued a stop-use order on the crane and shut a section of the site until a safety assessment is completed.
“This is a huge concern for WorkSafeBC,” said Suzana Prpic, the agency’s senior manager of prevention field services. “It underscores that workplace safety is critical and it can never be taken for granted.”
WorkSafeBC says in a statement that no one was injured in the latest incident and preliminary evidence indicated few if any similarities between this crane accident and three others in Metro Vancouver this year.
The safety agency didn’t release any specifics on the accident. However, a spokesperson with the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 115, which represents B.C. crane workers, said he believes there was a failure with the crane boom, the long arm of the machine. Assistant Business Manager Josh Towsley said when they surveyed the site, the boom appeared to have been disassembled.
Monday’s incident follows an accident from last month when female worker Yuridia Flores was killed in Vancouver’s Oakridge neighbourhood after a load fell from a crane onto an unfinished high rise.
READ ALSO: 1 dead after crane incident in Vancouver
On Jan. 26, a section of Lougheed Highway in Burnaby was temporarily shut down when a crane collapsed and dangled from a high rise tower under construction. Four days later, a crane at a site in Surrey appeared to partially collapse.
“Each of the incidents that has occurred are slightly different,” Prpic said. “And we’ll await the results of the investigation so that we can share more details.”
The issue of crane safety has re-emerged this year after police asked provincial prosecutors to consider criminal charges over the collapse of a crane in Kelowna, B.C., in July 2021. Five people were killed, four on the construction site and one person in a building next to the site, when the crane was being dismantled.
WorkSafeBC says there were 22 incidents involving tower cranes from 2019 to 2023 including the Kelowna collapse. That would breakdown to about four to five incidents a year, if distributed equally.
To have four incidents in less than two months is “absolutely unusual” and “extremely concerning,” Towsley said. His union has been pushing for tower crane operation to be made a compulsory trade in B.C. since 2019. Currently, operators of some types of cranes can become certified without going through an apprenticeship program.
WorkSafeBC estimates there are about 350 tower cranes currently operating in B.C., with about 650 credentialed operators across the province.
“Incidents involving cranes can be catastrophic, and we are very concerned with the number of incidents that have occurred in such a short period of time,” said Todd McDonald, the head of prevention services at WorkSafeBC in a statement.
In response to the recent string of incidents, WorkSafeBC says it is planning to bring crane operators, labour and the BC Association of Crane Safety together to discuss how to prevent future accidents.
The agency met with employers and the union representing trade workers in heavy construction on Tuesday to talk about proposed legislation.
Prpic said the agency is hoping the legislation would be “in place” this fall, requiring operators to notify WorkSafeBC for actions such as setting up, repositioning and dismantling of any tower crane on a work site.
Towsley said his union will be in talks with WorkSafeBC in the coming weeks as well, and that he is hopeful they’ll see more oversight and required training for crane operators.
“I’m optimistic now we might be heading in that direction.”
READ ALSO: RCMP recommend charges in Kelowna fatal crane collapse
READ ALSO: Union invests $2M in tower crane operation training in Lower Mainland
-With files from Jane Skrypnek
The Canadian Press