2 Alberta companies ordered to pay $550K over OHS violations related to welders' deaths
CBC
Two Alberta companies have admitted to violating provincial occupational health and safety rules over a workplace explosion that killed two men at an oil and gas site north of Edmonton in 2022.
The companies have been ordered to pay more than half a million dollars in fines and penalties, with most of the money going toward safety awareness and education initiatives.
Welders Greg Podulsky, 29, and Darcy Schwindt, 47, were working on top of a tank on Nov. 12., 2022, when an explosion occurred within a tank storage facility, fatally injuring them.
Tamarack Valley Energy Ltd. and Peace Pipefitting Inc. each pleaded guilty to one count of violating Alberta's OHS Act on Wednesday in the Slave Lake Court of Justice.
Justice Robert Marceau accepted a joint submission from the companies, which included fines and creative sentences.
Tamarack must pay $500,000, with most of the money going toward workplace safety initiatives and programming run by CAREERS: The Next Generation Foundation, a non-profit that works with Alberta youth, Energy Safety Canada, a safety organization, and Threads of Life, a charity that supports people affected by workplace injuries, illnesses and deaths.
Brian Schmidt, Tamarack Energy's CEO, said his company has supported the workers' families by funding scholarships and marked the deaths within the company with a moment of silence at work last year.
Schmidt said dealing with these tragedies has been the most difficult experience yet for his Calgary company.
"We're a small company and there are not a ton of employees, so when something like this happens, it's quite traumatic," he said Friday in an interview.
He also said it's important for the industry to do what it can to support the welders' families and share learnings with other companies.
"We changed their lives permanently," he said.
Peace Pipefitting must pay a $50,000 penalty, $30,000 of which will go toward programming at Threads of Life.
The company, which did not respond to a request for comment, has also been placed on enhanced regulatory supervision for two years.
Charlene Nahamko, Podulsky's mother, said she wore a sweatshirt bearing a photograph of her son to court this week.
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