Farm death was 'terrible learning experience,' inquiry says
Colleen Underwood | CBC News | Posted: December 8, 2015 2:20 AM | Last Updated: December 8, 2015
Robert Hamilton watched Stephen Gibson die after Gibson was entangled in equipment two years ago
On January 31, 2014, Stephen Gibson became entangled in some farm equipment and was killed while his employer looked on.
"You never forget it. It has to be something that everyone sees.... It was a terrible learning experience," Robert Hamilton, fighting back tears, told a two-day inquiry set up to investigate the death on Monday.
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He said the death has him convinced that safety education should be mandatory for both farm workers and their employers and there should be mandatory compensation for injured employees.
Gibson spent most of his life around farms, growing up on a dairy farm in New Zealand before working on several different cattle operations in Australia, B.C. and Alberta.
He died at the age of 46, four months after starting work on Hamilton's cattle and grain operation northwest of Calgary.
"He mentioned some concerns with how things were being done (safety wise)," Gibson's wife, Joan, told the courtroom in Cochrane. She couldn't recall any particular equipment or practices her husband might have mentioned.
Entangled in equipment
During his testimony, Hamilton said the two men were working together processing grain on the day of the accident. They had run into a problem which caused the power supply to shut off, so Gibson was manually turning an auger to keep grain moving.
Hamilton maintains it was safe because a potentially dangerous nearby piece of equipment called the power take off, or PTO, was also turned off.
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Within a few minutes, for reasons he still doesn't know, Hamilton says Gibson went over to the tractor, fired up the PTO, then went back to the auger.
"At that point I realized what he was doing, and I yelled at him to get back. He shouldn't have been standing there while the machine was going," said Hamilton
Hamilton said he believes Gibson's jacket got tangled in the rotating PTO.
"It happened in a split second, but that's how those things happen," he said.
Inquiry
The fatality inquiry is reviewing the facts to see whether anything can be done to prevent similar deaths and the provincial court judge overseeing it may issue recommendations.
Hamilton was asked if he's made any changes since Gibson's death.
He said the next day he got rid of the PTO, which was about 40-50 years old and lacked the proper protective shielding.
Before Gibson's death, he says his business didn't have any safety procedures in place, he didn't offer or take any safety courses, and everything he knew about safety he had learned on the job.
He now holds monthly safety meetings for staff.
"We're proactive at trying to make sure we're in a better spot to address safety concerns," said Hamilton.
Corrections:- An earlier version of this story said Robert Hamilton supported the Alberta government's farm safety legislation, Bill 6. Hamilton supports "advocating farm safety, and having mandatory compensation for injured workers" but does not support Bill 6 in its current form. December 8, 2015 3:46 AM