The Westray Mine Explosion

by Caroline O’Connell & Albert Mills Saint Mary’s University Halifax, Canada

This case may be used by current adopters of: S. L. McShane & M. A. von Glinow, Organizational Behavior, 3rd ed. (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2005); S. L. McShane Canadian Organizational Behaviour, 5th ed. (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 2004); S. L. McShane & T. Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour on the Pacific Rim, 1st ed. (Sydney: McGraw-Hill Australia, 2003)

By Caroline O’Connell & Albert Mills, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Canada

It was the sixth of February 1996. Carl Guptill sat at his kitchen table nursing a cup of coffee. He was a beefy man with long hair, often tucked through the back of a baseball cap. The next day he would testify at the Commission of Inquiry into the Westray Mine explosion and friends had been phoning to offer their support. One caller, a geologist from nearby Antigonish, hadn’t been in touch since working with Guptill at a mine in Guysborough County more than five years ago; but he wanted Carl to know he was thinking of him.

Carl Guptill’s thoughts drifted back to another kitchen table – Roy Feltmate’s. Roy, a longtime friend, had worked on B crew at the Westray Mine. In April of 1992, three months after he had left his job at Westray, Guptill met up with Roy and four other members of B crew, at Feltmate’s home. Talk quickly turned to safety at the mine. Conditions had continued to deteriorate and the men believed that an explosion or a cave- in was inevitable. They calculated their odds of being the crew underground when it happened at 25 per cent. The men made Guptill promise that if they died in the mine, he would “go public” and tell the world what he knew. Mike MacKay implored him to “do it for our widows”.

On May 9, 1992, a few short weeks after that kitchen meeting, the odds caught up with Roy Feltmate, Mike MacKay, Randy House, Robbie Fraser and 22 other members of B crew. At 5:20 am an explosion ripped through the Westray Mine. All 26 miners underground died. Fifteen bodies were recovered but 11 bodies, including Roy Feltmate’s and Mike MacKay’s remained in the mine. Guptill would keep his promise to them.

One Miner’s Tale Carl Guptill had worked in hard rock mines in Nova Scotia prior to hiring on at Westray. At the Gay’s River Mine, he had chaired the health and safety committee and at the Forest Hill Mine he’d been a shift supervisor to a crew of 35 or more men. He had completed an advanced management course at Henson College, the continuing education arm of Halifax’s Dalhousie University. He was mine rescue certified and had been captain of a mine rescue team. As both a miner and a supervisor, he’d enjoyed a good working relationship with Albert McLean, the provincial mine inspector. Guptill put safety first and believed he’d made that clear to Roger Parry, underground manager at Westray, when Parry interviewed him for a job.

After only a few shifts, Guptill began to question safety practices at Westray. Farm tractors, which shouldn’t even be used underground, were loaded beyond their capacity. Combustible coal dust was allowed to build up underground; levels of explosive methane gas were too high and the methanometers that detected the gas were rigged to circumvent

Copyright © 2004 McGraw-Hill Ryerson Limited Page 2 The Westray Mine Explosion their intended purpose of warning miners when gas levels were dangerous. In addition, miners worked 12- hour shifts, often without breaks. The batteries for miners’ headlamps could not sustain their charge and were often dim or out by the end of a shift. There were no underground toilets and miners relieved themselves in unused corners of the mine.

Complaints fell on deaf ears. One supervisor answered Guptill’s concerns with the comment that “they got a few thousand applications up on top, men willing to come down here and take your place.” On only his 13th shift, Guptill’s supervisor ordered him to continue working after his lamp had dimmed. In the dark, Guptill stumbled and a steel beam he was attempting to move landed on him and injured him. After three days in hospital, he called Roger Parry. The conversation quickly turned into a shouting match. Guptill then contacted Claude White, the provincial director of mine safety. White, in turn, sent him to mine inspector Albert McLean.

Shortly thereafter Guptill met with McLean, John Smith, the man responsible for inspection of electrical and mechanical equipment in mines, and Fred Douche, in charge of mine rescue. In this meeting Carl Guptill spoke of his accident and of the many safety violations he had observed in his short time working at Westray. Guptill expected that his report would result in a shutdown of the mine and a complete investigation. Weeks later, having heard nothing, he again called inspector Albert McLean. The two met once more, this time in a local motel room, instead of the labor department’s offices. McLean kept the television on high volume throughout the meeting. Puzzled, Guptill later concluded that McLean was fearful he would tape the meeting. McLean told Guptill that the other men had not backed up his complaints and that as inspector, he could do little. He did offer to “put in a good word” for Guptill with management if he wanted to return to work. This was the story Carl Guptill told the Commission of Inquiry.

A Snapshot of Mining in Picot County The four communities of Trenton, New Glasgow, Westville and Stellarton run into each other to make up Pictou County, Nova Scotia. All told, 25,000 people live there, descendants of Scots that landed with the ship Hector and immigrants from the other British Isles and Europe that followed Britain’s General Mining Association oversees in the early nineteenth century. Hardy stock, they had mined the county’s 25 seams of coal for generations. One historian estimated that nearly 600 residents lost their lives in coal mines, as many as had been killed in both world wars. Although full of coal, the seams were considered among the most dangerous in the world; the beds were uneven and the ash content was high. The mines were subject to rock falls and flooding. Most significant were the high levels of explosive methane gas.

At its peak in 1875, Pictou coal mines produced 250,000 tons of coal a year and employed over 1600 men and boys. The last mine operating in Pictou was the small, privately operated Drummond Mine that closed in 1984. By the mid-eighties, the only coal mines left in Nova Scotia were operating under heavy federal subsidy in Cape Breton, an economically depressed area in the northernmost part of the province. Cape Breton mines might have met the same fate as those in Pictou had they not been in the territory of a powerful federal Member of Parliament as the oil crisis in the Middle East

Copyright © 2004 McGraw-Hill Ryerson Limited Page 3 The Westray Mine Explosion dominated headlines and economies in the 1970’s. Under OPEC, oil from the Middle East was subject both to price hikes and embargoes. This rejuvenated the dying Cape Breton coal industry and coal rebounded as a source of energy in Nova Scotia. In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, a similar opportunity presented itself to the industry in Pictou. An evolving environmental agenda was driving power generation. The provincial electrical utility, Nova Scotia Power Corporation, was seeking to lower its sulphur dioxide emissions. It needed an alternative to high-sulphur Cape Breton coal. Enter Clifford Frame, Curragh Resources and Westray.

Politics and Big Guns Clifford Frame, a big man, who drove big cars, raised cattle and smoked expensive cigars, was a self-made tycoon in the style of a previous era. In his youth he turned down a chance to play for the New York Rangers farm team. Instead he got a degree in mine engineering and worked his way from the pit to the corner office. After rising to the post of president of Denison Mines, he’d been fired in 1985 after a very public project failure in British Columbia. He formed Curragh Resources in 1985 and had early success reviving a lead-zinc mine in the Yukon. In 1987, the industry publication the Northern Miner named him “Mining Man of the Year”. That same year he incorporated Westray Coal and a year later, in 1988 he bought out Suncor’s coal rights in Pictou County. In his time at Denison, Frame had come to know key political players in Ottawa. Through these connections he was introduced to Elmer MacKay, then federal representative for Pictou, and Minister of Public Works. Frame aggressively sought federal and political support for his operation. Pictou County was burdened by a 20 per cent unemployment rate and Frame promised that his mine would employ at least 250 people in jobs paying $35,000 - $60,000 for 15 years. Economic spin-off in neighboring communities would total in the millions of dollars. Politicians, including then Premier John Buchanan, supported Frame. Perhaps the project’s greatest advocate was local provincial MLA (Member of the Legislative Assembly) Donald Cameron who became minister of economic development as the project evolved and ultimately was elected Premier, his position at the time of the explosion.

Frame successfully negotiated a $12 million equity loan with the Provincial government as well as an $8 million interim loan when federal negotiations lagged. He also struck a so-called “take or pay” agreement that guaranteed a market for Westray coal. Under this contract, the Nova Scotia government would buy 275,000 tons of coal if other buyers did not materialize. Westray would pay back any revenues from this agreement without interest at the end of 15 years. The federal government proved a tougher sell and discussions dragged out over three years. Ultimately the federal government came through with a loan guarantee of $85 million and an interest buydown of nearly $27 million. This was much less than the amount originally sought by Frame and much more than the government’s policies usually allowed for such projects. Harry Rogers, a federal deputy minister, was involved in the negotiations and would later describe Clifford Frame as “…personally abrasive and abusive…Probably the most offensive persona I have met in business or in government.” However a deal was struck and in September of

1991, at Westray’s official opening, politicians at both levels lined up to congratulate each other and the company.

Rules of the Game Mining is dangerous work. The first regulations to protect the safety of miners date back to 1873 and provided for the inspection of mines. In 1881 legislation allowed for the certification of miners and mine officials. The new rules also called for gas testing and banned smoking underground. This legislation followed a disaster in which 60 miners died and made Nova Scotia mines the safest in the world, according to one mining historian. In 1923 the age limit for working underground was raised from 12 to 16. (It would not be raised to age 18 until 1951.) By 1927, the maximum allowable level of methane in a mine was 2.5 per cent. At the time of the Westray explosion, a methane reading of 2.5 per cent required the removal of all workers from the site, while a reading of 1.25 per cent mandated the shutdown of electricity that could spark an explosion.

At the time the Westray mine exploded, the regulation of coal mining in Nova Scotia fell primarily under the Coal Mines Regulation Act, a 160-page piece of legislation considered 30 years out of date. An example of its anachronisms could be found in section 94 that outlined the duties of stablemen who tended the horses underground. The section provided for care of the horses and cleanliness of the stables. A further indication of just how out of date the legislation was, and how limited was its power to deter unsafe behaviors, was the fine schedule. The maximum fine that could be levied under the Act was $200. More applicable to the modern mine, it also regulated the qualifications required for various levels of mining competency, including miners, managers, owners and inspectors. Most significantly, for Westray, the legislation regulated maximum allowable levels of methane. It also stipulated the removal of highly combustible coal dust and the spreading of limestone dust to neutralize its effects. The Act included provisions for roof supports and the prohibition of tobacco products and matches underground; it permitted worker inspections of the mines and limited shift duration to eight hours. All would become issues for public scrutiny after the explosion.

Operating in parallel was the provincial Occupational Health and Safety Act enacted in 1986. It imposed on employers the obligation to ensure workplace safety and to provide appropriate training, equipment, facilities and supervision. This legislation also required employees to take safety precautions, to wear appropriate clothing or equipment and to cooperate with employers, regulators and other employees in these goals. The Act also mandated joint occupational health and safety committees for workplaces with designated numbers of employees. These committees made up of both employer and worker representatives were charged with educating on safety issues, maintaining records, inspecting the workplace and responding to complaints. A key element of this legislation was a worker’s right to refuse unsafe work and not to be discriminated against, or punished for doing so. The Act also provided that the legislation itself must be available for inspection by workers so that they might be aware of their rights. It also required employers to report to the regulators any accident resulting in an injury.

When this legislation was passed, responsibility for enforcement was transferred from the provincial department of Mines and Energy to the department of Labor. Inspectors also retained jurisdiction over the Coal Mines Regulation Act. Both Acts authorized inspectors to order a work stoppage and the Coal Mines Regulation Act, under section 64, specifically empowered an inspector to order a dangerous mine closed.

A day in the life1 The continuous miner roared, cutting coal from the face of the mine and loading it into shuttle cars for transport to a conveyor belt. A huge machine, it allowed previously unheard of quantities of coal to be mined in day. Pictou miners knew it was a far cry from the pick and shovels of their grandfather’s mines and the explosives of their father’s mines. The men at work that day were the usual mixed bag of experienced miners and untried “newbies”. Like most days at Westray, even those with underground experience had gained it in hard rock mines, not coal mines. There were simply not enough certified coal minters in the area to fill the jobs. Claude White had granted the company an exemption under the Coal Mines Regulation Act to use hard rock miners in their place. Lenny Bonner and Shaun Comish were old friends and veterans of hard rock mining. They had been hired together and their pit talk this morning centered on a recent accident in the mine.

A young kid, Matthew Sears, had his leg crushed when he tried to replace a roller on the conveyor belt. As he stood on the belt, it started up without the usual warning and his leg was jammed in a large roller. The men in the mine at the time had reported that Ralph Melanson kept pulling the safety cable to stop the belt, but it kept restarting. Sears had been through five surgeries since the accident and would be months off work. “Poor kid,” said one to the other, “he told me that his first day on the job he didn’t even know how to turn his lamp on.” Roger Parry had sent him down alone to meet his crew and he’d stood there, shocked by how dark it was. Both Bonner and Comish recalled their first day at Westray. Without any orientation, they’d been issued their self-rescuers and sent underground. At the time they had laughed because neither of them understood most of what Roger Parry said to them. Between his British accent and his wad of chewing tobacco, all meaning was lost. Both men had progressed quickly underground from installing arches on the roadway and roof supports in the rooms being mined to operating equipment – drills, the bolter, the shuttle car. Neither had received any specific instruction.

As Comish put it, “I got on it and [he] showed me what levers to move and what was your brake and what was your throttle and away you go.” He recalled with some nostalgia the mine in Ontario where he had learned to drive a scoop tram in a designated training are, away from production. Both men knew that at Westray, the more equipment a miner could operate the higher his pay.

1 All events described in this section are based on the sworn testimony of miners and other witnesses to the Commission of Inquiry. They are told here as if they happened on one workday. Except for this change in chronology they are an accurate depiction of work underground at Westray as described by the parties.

The continuous miner had come to a stop. This meant the methanometer or “sniffer” had detected too much gas. Comish pressed the reset button a few times to no effect. Bonner was running the shuttle car and waited. Comish overpowered the trip switch and kept filling the shuttle car. He disliked overriding a safety measure that was really for his own protection but he’d been shown how to do it and he understood what was expected. The mine’s bonus system was simple: more coal meant more money. As he did every four days when he was back underground, Comish thought about quitting; he thought again about the roof over his family’s heads and the food on their plates, sighed and got back to work. Some days, there was no need to override the sniffer. Comish recalled working in the Southwest section of the mine one shift when the methanometer wasn’t working. Comish had turned to Donnie Dooley and joked, “if we get killed, I’ll never speak to you again.” Despite the jokes and the camaraderie, Comish couldn’t escape the feeling that things weren’t quite right. He decided that this day he just didn’t want to be in the mine. He planned to tell his supervisor that he had to leave at five to get his car fixed – a harmless white lie.

Some of the men underground that day wondered when Eugene Johnson would be back from Montreal. His name had been selected from a draw to go to a ceremony where the industry association would give out the John T. Ryan award honoring Westray as the safest coal mine in Canada. The award was based on reported accident statistics. Johnson and his wife were scheduled to see National Hockey League game along with Clifford Frame and his wife. The men were sure that he’d have some stories from his trip.

Bonner asked Comish if Wayne Cheverie was underground that day. Neither could recall seeing him at the beginning of the shift. With no tag system in the deployment area, at any given time there was no way of knowing who or how many people were underground. Lenny Bonner thought back to his time at the Gay’s River Mine. The tag system there had been stringently enforced. One day, he’d forgotten to tag out, meaning that his tag was on the board and therefore, he was officially still underground. Although his shift boss had watched him leave the property, he could not remove a miner’s tag from the board. Instead, Bonner had driven back, tagged out and his shift boss had been required to wait since he could not leave until all men under his charge were accounted for.

The men were interested in Wayne Cheverie because he was making a lot of noise about safety lately. Even back in September at the official opening of the mine, he had buttonholed Albert McLean after the ceremonies. Cheverie reported that he had told McLean many of his concerns about roof conditions and the lack of stone dust and asked him point blank if he had the power to shut the mine down. McLean told him no. Cheverie knew the outcome for other miners who had complained – harassment and intimidation. However, it was well known among the men that Cheverie was coming to the end of his rope. He was not only talking about complaining to the department of labor, but he was also threatening to go to the media. Recently, after refusing work, Cheverie had been told by Arnie Smith, his direct supervisor, that if he left the mine, he’d

Copyright © 2004 McGraw-Hill Ryerson Limited Page 7 The Westray Mine Explosion be fired. His response, “fired or dead, Arnie, that’s not much of a choice, is it?” Bonner understood how Cheverie felt. A chunk of the mine’s roof had fallen on his head one day. Bonner had gone home with a sore leg and back and an egg on his head. He’d had to fight with management to get paid for the day. Roger Parry had said, “We don’t pay people for going home sick.” Bonner had replied, “If you call the roof coming in and chunks of coal hitting you on the head and the back and almost killing you, you call that ‘going home sick’!” Eventually he had been paid for the shift. He reflected that at least he was better off than that poor kid Todd MacDonald. On MacDonald’s first day of work, there’d been a roof fall and the kid had been buried up to his waist. He was flat on his back, facing the roof, as if he’d watched it fall instead of running the hell out of there.

Bonner and Comish and a few of the other men stopped work for a quick and belated break. They often didn’t get to their lunches until after their shifts. Bonner sat down with his lunch pail but jumped up again quickly. He had picked a spot too close to a pile of human waste but in the dark had not noticed it until the stink hit him. Back when he’d first started work at the mine, Bonner had spoken to mine manager Gerald Phillips about installing underground toilets. Phillips had told him that he was considering a number of different models. In the meantime, Bonner felt demeaned, like an animal forced to crouch on the ground like a dog. As it turned out, their lunch break was short lived anyway. Shaun Comish had warned the others that he saw a light approaching and the men had scattered like rats, fearing that Roger Parry was on his way down. With his usual profanities he would send them back to work.

Disaster Within minutes of the explosion neighbors and family members began to gather at the mine site. Within hours local, national and international media had set up equipment and reporters in the community centre that served as their hub. Family members, in an arena directly across from the centre, where they awaited news of their loved ones, resented the prying cameras and intrusive questions. For six days they waited, they cried, they drank coffee; they smoked cigarettes and comforted their children and each other with hopes of a triumphant rescue.

Family and community, producers and reporters, along with viewers everywhere grew to know Colin Benner as the “face of Westray”. He had been appointed to the position of President of Operations in April and had been responsible for the Westray Mine less than one month when it blew up. He had just barely begun the processes that he hoped would help dig Westray out of its financial hole. Production was short with the mine failing to provide the 60,000 tons a month to Nova Scotia Power for which it had contracted. Sales in the previous six months had reached $7.3 million but costs had exceeded $13 million. Benner had also heard rumblings about safety, about discontent among the miners and about the heavy-handed techniques of Gerald Phillips and Roger Parry.

All this however, was put aside as he dealt with the crisis. He served as media liaison, updating on the progress of the rescue efforts. By the sixth day he was showing the strain and it was with obvious sorrow on May 14th that he announced the search was being

Copyright © 2004 McGraw-Hill Ryerson Limited Page 8 The Westray Mine Explosion discontinued as their was no hope that anyone could have survived the blast. It was simply too dangerous for the rescue crews to continue.

Search for Truth On May 15, just the day after Colin Benner had announced that the search for the miners had been suspended, Premier Donald Cameron appointed Justice Peter Richard as a Commission of Inquiry into the explosion. His terms of reference were broad and mandated him to look into all aspects of the establishment, management and regulation of the Westray Mine. They specifically empowered the Inquiry to determine if any “neglect had caused or contributed to the occurrence” and if the events could have been prevented. A tangled web of legal proceedings held up the Inquiry for more than three years. In that time both provincial charges and criminal charges were laid, then withdrawn against the company and its managers.

The Inquiry heard its first testimony on November 6, 1995. Justice Richard also undertook substantial study on coal mining and mine safety to prepare for the task. He visited mines in Canada and the United States and consulted with experts in South Africa, Great Britain and Australia. He commissioned technical reports from six experts in subjects that included mining ventilation and geotechnology. He commissioned academic studies in history, economics, psychology and political science. These reports provided him with insight into the history of mining in Pictou, the multiplier effect of large-scale employment on the communities, the impact of production bonuses on miners’ behavior and the role of ministerial responsibility in the public sector. The Inquiry heard 71 witnesses in 76 days of testimony and produced 16,815 pages of transcripts; it entered 1579 exhibits into evidence after examining 800 boxes of documents. The total cost of the Inquiry was nearly $5 million.

Justice Richard’s findings are contained in a three-volume, 750-page report entitled, “The Westray Story: A Predictable Path to Disaster”. He released his report on December 1, 1997. His key conclusion was that the explosion was both predictable and preventable. He acknowledged the 20/20 vision that accompanies hindsight but in specific, detailed and readable prose he isolated the many factors that contributed to an explosion that cost 26 men their lives, left over 20 women widows and over 40 children fatherless. He set he tone of his report by quoting the French sociologist and inspector general of mines, Frederic Le Play (1806-1882) who said, “The most important thing to come out of a mine is the miner.” Justice Richard, in the preface to his report, noted that “the Westray Story is a complex mosaic of actions, omissions, mistakes, incompetence, apathy, cynicism, stupidity, and neglect.” He noted with some dismay the overzealous political sponsorship of Westray’s start-up but he clearly implicated management as the entity most responsible through its arrogance, its lack of training, its tacit and overt support of unsafe practices and its production bonus system. Only Colin Benner and Graham Clow were singled out for praise. Each had attended the Inquiry without subpoena and at his own expense. They were the only Curragh executives to testify. Benner, in particular, offered key testimony on his plans for the mine. He had stuck a Mine Planning Task Force to address the safety and production problems in the mine. His goal had been to design a safe and achievable mine plan that incorporated human relations and mutual respect

Copyright © 2004 McGraw-Hill Ryerson Limited Page 9 The Westray Mine Explosion among workers and managers. His plans had been cut short by the explosion. Justice Richard also noted the many failures of the provincial inspectorate, describing it as “markedly derelict”. He singled out inspector Albert McLean for his incompetence and lack of diligence, but did not spare his supervisors to whom McLean’s failings should have been obvious. Finally, he vindicated Carl Guptill. He concluded that McLean’s treatment of him was a “disservice to a miner with legitimate complaints”.

Epilogue In 1993 a review by Coopers and Lybrand of Nova Scotia’s Labor Department’s management and practices recommended sweeping changes to the department that included staff training, development and performance reviews. In 1997 a revised Occupational Health and Safety Act became law. In 1995 all criminal charges against Westray and mine officials were stayed for procedural reasons. In 1998, in embarrassed response to the findings of the Commission of Inquiry, the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (CIM) rescinded the John T. Ryan award for safety, presented to the late Eugene Johnson on behalf of Westray on the eve of the explosion. In 1999 the federal leader of the NDP introduced a private member’s bill in the House of Commons to amend the Criminal Code to hold corporations, executives and directors liable for workplace deaths. The bill died on the order paper after an election call. In 2001 the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal denied the Westray Families Group the right to sue the provincial government, concluding that such a lawsuit contravened provincial workers’ compensation legislation. This was upheld in 2002 by the Supreme Court of Canada. In May of 2002, ten years after the explosion and despite all lobbying and legislative efforts, Parliament was still considering the issue of corporate criminal liability.

Albert McLean and others were fired from their positions in the Department of Labor. Donald Cameron won a provincial election in 1993 but was defeated in 1998. Shortly thereafter he accepted a posting in Boston as Consul General to the United States. It was reported that Gerald Phillips had been charged with attempted homicide in Honduras as a result of an injury to a young man caught up in a protest to prevent a mine operation that threatened his village. A Vancouver based mining company subsequently hired Phillips in 1998. Although Curragh Resources dissolved into bankruptcy as a result of the explosion, Clifford Frame continued to attract investors and at last report was continuing to develop mines. Roger Parry was last known to be driving a bus in Alberta. Many miners left Pictou County and looked for work in western and northern Canada. Carl Guptill operates an aquaculture business on Nova Scotia’s Eastern Shore. Some of the “Westray widows” have moved, remarried and rebuilt their lives while others remain frozen in loss. The bodies of 11 miners remain underground.

Sources Jobb, D. (1994). Calculated Risk: Greed, Politics and the Westray Tragedy. Halifax, Nimbus.

Richard, J.K.P. (1997) The Westray Story: A predictable path to disaster: Report of the Westray Mine Public Inquiry. Halifax, Province of Nova Scotia.

Transcripts of the Westray Mine Public Inquiry Commission. Indexed at http://alts.net/ns1625/950013index.html

Wilde, G. (1997) Risk awareness and risk acceptance at the Westray coal mine. Report to the Westray Mine Public Inquiry