2 workers hurt - $660,000 fine

The importance of self-auditing and enforcement of lockout tag out procedures has been recommended by the Aluminium Plant Safety Blog. Here is a recent incident that may have been prevented if the aluminium company followed our recommendations:

The Canadian government has handed an aluminium company a hefty fine for an incident at (one of) the company’s smelters.

The company was fined just over $660,000 last month for what the Canadian government described as “high-risk violation”. 

According to the government report, two workers doing maintenance work inside a gas treatment centre reactor were trapped inside the reactor and sustained exposure injuries. 

Investigators found that the work had been done without all locks in place as required by the firm’s confined space key box procedure. The Canadian government says there was no record of a risk assessment for the work task and the key box procedure did not name everyone who applied locks.

It says the aluminium company failed to ensure that “energy-isolating devices were locked in a safe position using acceptable procedures”.

The Canadian government says penalties are published as a deterrent and to highlight the importance of making workplaces safe. 

We pray that the injured workers recover fully from their injuries. All too often when workers skip steps in the lockout tagout process a fatality is the result. These two workers were very lucky to survive. We pray that this story will be used a toolbox talk to educate workers on what could happen if they do not follow their training.

The Aluminium Times Magazine had an article about lockout tagout. It can be downloaded here.

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