Worker was using cutting torch when spring mechanism caused critical injury
London Salvage and Trading Company Limited has been fined $55,000 because it didn’t properly train a worker who was critically injured while dismantling a bulldozer.
The incident happened in November 2021 while three workers were tearing apart the piece of heavy machinery in the yard of the company’s facility in London, Ontario. Two workers were using cutting torches while a third operated a mobile crane to move pieces around.
Part of the bulldozer included a spring tension system, with a spring that was more than a metre long and 20 centimetres in diameter. It was contained inside a hollow bore, that had a cover to keep the spring inside. The cover had a protruding shaft on the outside.
One of the workers cutting the machine apart was standing directly in front of this cover, and when he put the torch to it the energy from the spring was released, launching the cover and shaft into the worker, causing a critical injury.
The company pleaded guilty to failing “as an employer to provide information, instruction and supervision to a worker with respect to the safe dismantling of a bulldozer at the workplace,” according to the Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training, and Skills Development.
The company is also ordered to pay a victim surcharge that is credited to the special provincial government fund to assist victims of crime.
