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Backcountry poses risks to workers

WorkSafe BC highlights the need to be diligent about identifying risks when working in dangerous areas
Black Press Media

Workers whose jobs take them into BC’s backcountry are at potential risk of serious injury or death in avalanche hazard zonesand need to be diligent about understanding how those risks can be identified and mitigated, WorkSafeBC says.

In particular, workers in BC’s primary resource and construction industries face risks at their worksites, on forest service roads,during work-related snowmobile activity and during highway maintenance.

Since 1998 in BC, avalanches have caused three worker deaths and 47 accepted lost-time injury claims.

Of the latter, a dozen were in the Kootenays — the second most of any region in BC after Squamish-Lillooet.

While the majority of workers injured were in occupations within the ski hill and winter lodge industries, a land surveyor and atruck driver were also injured.