B.C. odour incidents spark questions around corporate ethics and communication

Vancouver resident Robert Ford was heading to a yoga class Sunday morning when he smelled an odour he likened to "semi-burnt fuel."

Vancouver resident Robert Ford was heading to a yoga class Sunday morning when he smelled an odour he likened to “semi-burnt fuel.”

As a member of council at his Kitsilano apartment building, he said he decided to check the boiler room, but it smelled fine.

“I was expecting something in there, so that was strange. I scratched my head and I went to the front door, which is right across from the beach, and it was 10 times more powerful outside,” he said.

He immediately began searching online for an explanation but didn’t find any answers until almost four hours later.

“I’m just kind of perplexed at how we can have such a nasty event with no public information hardly,” he said.

It was one of two acrid odours that spread over parts of Metro Vancouver in less than a week, raising questions about corporate responsibility to inform the public when such events cause widespread concern and confusion but fall short of health and safety breaches.

The smell Ford referred to was revealed to be “an unplanned issue” with a Parkland fuel refinery processing unit in neighbouring Burnaby. The heavy stench, which Ford compared to jet fuel, blanketed parts of Metro Vancouver and caused more than 100 complaints from local residents.

It came just days after a gas leak from a FortisBC natural gas plant in nearby Delta, B.C., prompted criticisms from Mayor George Harvie and numerous residents that the utility didn’t notify the public for more than four hours.