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The construction disaster that changed B.C.

Despite progress, advocates say more needs to be done to end on-the-job deaths.
mikedavisconstructiondisastervancouver
Mike Davis’s father died in a 1981 construction disaster in Vancouver. ‘I’ve always believed that my grief was like the ocean,’ he said.

Mike Davis’s last outing with his dad was a bike ride to the worksite where his father was helping to build a massive office building. 

They had bought the bikes  at an RCMP auction and fixed them up like new. They rode the 10-speeds  from Burnaby down Kingsway, zipped through back streets and found  themselves at the shell of the Bentall IV, a 35-storey building that  Donald Davis was helping build as a carpenter.  

To Donald’s chagrin, the site was locked up  for the weekend. He’d wanted his son to see it. They headed home,  stopping briefly to buy a snack at a convenience store with the spare  change they had in their pockets. 

Soon after, Donald Davis went to Bentall IV and never came back. 

He and three other  carpenters — Brian Stevenson, Gunther Couvreux and Yrjo Mitrunen — fell  to their deaths from 100 metres when the platform that held them  collapsed on Jan. 7, 1981. Donald was 34. Mike was only 13. 

“My dad would come home  from work, put down his lunchbox and play basketball with me in the  driveway. It seemed he was the loudest one on the sides at my soccer  games,” Mike Davis said at a memorial this month. “And one day, he just  didn’t come home.”

The Bentall tragedy inspired a slew of  changes, revolutionizing occupational health and safety in construction.  Government officials and families gather every year at a small nearby  plaque to commemorate the lives lost and reaffirm their commitment to  health and safety regulations.  

But many labour advocates say there is  still much work to be done. About 30 British Columbians who work in  construction die every year, a figure that union leaders say is  unacceptably high. 

“I think the lessons that we learned have  been forgotten,” said Lee Loftus, an insulator and former president of  the BC Building Trades. “These are lessons that will be learned again  tomorrow, and that’s a shame.”

The day of the fall
Loftus remembers when the platform  collapsed. In 1981, he was a young journeyperson working as an insulator  in downtown Vancouver. He had worked on Bentall IV just weeks earlier. 

Within 30 minutes of the accident, Loftus  had gotten word; within 45 minutes, workers from across construction  sites downtown had rushed to the scene. 

“That’s just what you do. We were all at a  loss,” Loftus said. He remembers chaos: ambulances and firetrucks  everywhere. “We just stood there dumbfounded, trying to figure out what  the hell? What happened?” 

That was the question families had, too.  They lobbied aggressively for a coroner’s inquest into the death. Over  an eight-day hearing the next month, that inquest found a series of  problems plaguing the site: designs were approved without minimum  testing, adjustments were made to equipment without the green light from  engineers and there were effectively no written safety policies. 

And then there was the platform — a  “flying” or “slip” form meant to allow workers to pour concrete on each  floor as the building rose. “Panel E,” as it was called, had  modifications that made it atypical. 

The result of the coroner’s inquest was a  joint union/employer inquiry into the state of B.C.’s construction  industry and a blitz of activity from what was then called the Workers  Compensation Branch to get construction companies to comply with  existing rules.

“Employers were not talking about  occupational health and safety. They weren’t doing safety education.  There were some issues with compliance and safety structures,” Loftus  said. 

Overnight, he said, things  changed. Suddenly safety committees were a regular feature at worksites.  There were new rules around scaffolding and meetings about known  hazards. 

Leading that charge were members of the  families, who testified at the coroner’s inquest and led a push to  commemorate the tragedy at a plaque that now sites near the Burrard  SkyTrain station — a request Vancouver’s Park Board had originally  rejected. 

The ripple effect
Every year, government officials and union  leaders gather on the anniversary of the Bentall tragedy to remember the  lives lost. The families, though, do this every day. 

“I’ve always believed that my grief was  like the ocean,” Davis said. “There’s a lot of it, and sometimes the  tide is out and it’s not close enough to touch me. Then there’s other  times the waves will get you, and you don’t know when they’re going to  come. It’s random as you walk along the beach. And there’s days you’re  hit with huge waves.” 

In the immediate aftermath of his father’s  death, Davis was in shock. Then the grief set in. It comes and goes, he  says. When his oldest son turned 13, it hit him hard. 

“I didn’t know what a father-son  relationship looked like after that age. And me being the father, I  didn’t know what the future held,” Davis said. 

He found ways to use his grief. At one  point, he worked as a chef, and parlayed that into a job with BC  Ferries. He joined the union there and became a member of the local  safety committee.

“It struck a nerve. It struck a chord.  Later I realized I was putting some of my pain I had been carrying for  years and putting it to some positive purpose,” Davis said. 

The legacy of Bentall IV is one of hard lessons and policy change. 

But few in the labour movement believe  worker protections in construction are strong enough today, and many  feel they’ve been slipping back. 

“We have big changes, and some of those  changes have been enduring. But we have also drifted back into  complacency,” BC Building Trades executive director Brynn Bourke said. 

Bourke says many of the recommendations  made by the inquiry — like monthly construction site inspections and  automatic penalties when orders are disregarded — are still things  unions are calling for today. 

Since the Bentall disaster, Bourke says  1,441 construction workers in B.C. have died. The fact that roughly 30  construction workers die in B.C. every year makes the industry one of  the province’s most dangerous, Bourke says.

Loftus attended this year’s memorial at  Discovery Park, near where Bentall IV still stands. Wearing a hardhat  and safety vest, he laid a white rose atop the plaque. Like many, he  comes here every year, not because the work is done but because he knows  it isn’t.

“It reminds me of something we need to try  to get back to. It reminds me there is more loss of life in front of us  if we don’t,” Loftus said.