An excavator on a flat car - Date/Photographer unknown.

9 March 2012

CP Rail Fined in Man's Death

Thunder Bay Ontario - The family of a South Gillies heavy-equipment operator who was killed two years ago when an excavator plunged down a Lake Superior cliff say they're disappointed in the amount of a fine levied this week against CP Rail.
 
The company was fined $100,000 Wednesday in Thunder Bay court after pleading guilty to a federal labour charge of failing to inform people coming onto a work site of potential hazards.
 
"It doesn't seem like very much for a company as big as CP Rail," Karen Slomke said Thursday from her Thunder Bay home.
 
Slomke's younger brother, 52-year-old Keith Gudmundson, died 19 Jan 2010 when the excavator he was operating fell off a rail car on CP's freight line near Rossport and went down a steep, 25-metre cliff.
 
An experienced construction worker and a single father of two children, Gudmundson had been working for a Thunder Bay contractor that day.
 
The contractor was not charged in the accident.
 
A trial that had begun in late January this year and resumed this week ended Wednesday following CP Rail's guilty plea.
 
Eight other charges against the railway were dropped Wednesday.
 
CP Rail called Gudmundson's death "a rare, tragic accident."
 
"This accident occurred more than two years ago, and since then CP has been actively reinforcing workplace safety with all our employees and contract workers," CP spokesman Kevin Hrysak said Thursday in an email.
 
Officials who followed the trial when it started in January say the prosecution and defence disagreed on exactly how Gudmundson's machine came to fall off the rail car.
 
Details of the incident are contained in an engineer's report that has yet to be made public.
 
It's believed Gudmundson's job that day was to widen a rock cut in the remote location overlooking the lake.
 
Slomke said she had been hoping the trial would raise some issues to prevent a similar incident.
 
"We didn't want this to happen to someone else," she said.
 
Regional coroner Dr. Michael Wilson said Thursday the case does not qualify for a mandatory inquest, because although Gudmundson was a construction worker, the scene was not deemed to be a construction site.
 
In Ontario, inquests are only mandatory when someone dies at a mine or a construction site, or while in police custody.
 
Wilson said he read the engineer's report and found the issues "complex," but said he's not in a position to share what the report contains.
 
"Our mandate does not get into accountability or responsibility," he said.
 
Wilson added he doesn't currently see a need to call a discretionary inquest into the case, "but that can change."
 
Family members of a victim can request an inquest be held, even when it's not mandatory, said Wilson.
 
Such requests are considered on a case-by-case basis.
 
Carl Clutchey.