Safety conference hears ‘incredible’ testimonies from accident survivors

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This article was published 22/02/2024 (636 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Chris Cederstrand was 25 years old when he lost his right leg while operating a piece of heavy machinery on a road construction job.

The gears slipped on the packer that Cederstrand was driving, and it started rolling down a hill toward an intersection of a busy thoroughfare in Calgary.

He managed to steer the 30,000-kilogram machine away from the intersection, and then he jumped off.

“In that split second, I was trying to figure out how to slow it down or what I could do,” Cederstrand said. “I don’t think I’d be able to live with myself knowing that if I had made the other decision and it had gone into the intersection, potentially hurting a lot of people. That would have been much harder to deal with.

“At the end of the day, I was left with that choice,” said Cederstrand.

As he jumped off the packer, it flipped and caught part of his leg.

“I was rushed into surgery in an attempt to save and repair the damage to my leg. Unfortunately, my femoral artery let go and my leg was amputated above the knee,” he said.

Cederstrand shared his story to an audience of more than 300 in Brandon on Wednesday, during a one-day safety conference in the Keystone Centre’s amphitheatre.

It was hosted by the Wheat City’s Chemtrade Logistics, a chemical plant in the city’s east end that makes a bleaching agent for the pulp and paper industry.

Two other motivational speakers also told their personal stories about how they were injured on the job and their lives were changed forever.

Curtis Weber was 17 years old when he was on the third day of a construction job in Saskatchewan. As the crew was moving a steel grain bin under an overhead power line, Weber grabbed the bin to steady it and was shocked with 14,400 volts of electricity.

Weber’s message was how human behaviour needs to change when it comes to safety, identifying hazards, and risk assessment.

Brad Livingstone’s personal account of his workplace tragedy came with how he has accepted that he violated procedures, took a short cut and condoned the unsafe actions of a co-worker.

“It was an explosion. The first explosion blew me from the ground up. I landed on top of another tank and then that tank exploded, throwing me back on the ground,” Livingstone said.

Livingstone was on a welding job repairing pinhole leaks on a gas tank in rural Oklahoma. He said he was told that there was liquid at the bottom of the tanks, so if he accidentally burned through, the liquid would snuff out the fire.

Neither he nor his co-worker checked by measuring the level of liquid in the tank.

“We assumed the information was right,” Livingston said as he remembered. “We added a job to a busy day. It was nothing but a short cut.”

Because of the explosions, Livingston suffered third-degree burns across 63 per cent of his body, requiring skin grafts to recreate eyelids so he could close his eyes. His co-worker was killed.

“You never think it’s going to happen to you, and it happens so fast,” said Livingstone.

People need to show up to work and be hyper-aware of their surroundings, Livingstone added. To not have any distractions and be willing to stop something before it happens. Complacency is as bad as taking short cuts.

“That applies to everyone. Come to work without having blinders on, know what the hazards are and believe they can happen to you, instead of lying to yourself like we all typically do by saying ‘yeah, I’ll be fine,’” Livingstone said.

The safety day conference was the brainchild of Rick Zetariuk, plant manager at Chemtrade Logistics.

A motivational speaker he saw 30 years ago still resonates with him “to this day,” he said, and since it wasn’t possible to take all 78 plant employees to a safety conference, he decided to organize one in Brandon.

“It’s investing in ourselves, too, because we have a lot of different contractors on our site and certainly want them to work safely,” said Zetariuk. “So, it’s in our own best interest to have an event like this and open it up to the public. We had staff from Behlen Industries, Maple Leaf Foods, Shur-Gro, Manitoba Hydro and Koch Fertilizer. It’s been a resounding success.”

Pat Lamont agreed. He is now operational excellence manager at Chemtrade but came up through the ranks as a process engineer and maintenance manager.

“It’s incredible,” said Lamont. “You could hear a pin drop in there when they got going.

“You can sit through safety training — all of us have with the work that we do. But when you actually have someone who’s been injured, it’s a more powerful message and leaves a lasting impression,” he said.

“It shows why we have safety programs and shows the impact of not only the person who was injured, but on their families. That’s what we’re trying to do.”

Manitoba recorded more injuries in 2021 compared to 2020, according to data released by the province’s Workers Compensation Board.

There were also more severe injuries reported in 2021 (3,512) than in 2020 (3,051) and more fatality claims in 2021 (20) than the previous year (14).

Knowing the data and passing along the importance of workers taking precautions on the job is key, but there needs to be a call to action for employers on how workplace culture needs to change, said Cederstrand.

“It really is everybody from top to bottom, because that’s the best way to mitigate any sort of safety concern out there. If your CEO is giving you the same message that your foreman is giving you, it comes across as the right thing,” Cederstrand said.

“It’s very hard to change some people, especially that older guard that is used to having some sort of risk involved with their job. That’s how they grew up,” he added.

“So, when you’re talking about workplace safety, you need everybody to embrace that. Because if you have a kink in that chain, or you’re missing a link, that just creates massive, massive incidents.”

» mmcdougall@brandonsun.com

» X: @enviromichele