Nexen oilsands plant explosion victim ID'd as Drew Foster, 52
CBC News | Posted: January 18, 2016 2:57 PM | Last Updated: January 18, 2016
Maintenance worker described as 'an amazing father and husband' on GoFundMe page
The maintenance worker killed in an explosion at Nexen's Long Lake facility Friday in northern Alberta has been identified as 52-year-old Drew Foster.
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A GoFundMe page set up to help Foster's family describes him as caring and "an amazing father and husband" who was always smiling or laughing.
According to the page, Foster and his wife had been together for 25 years and helped anyone they could.
The family is asking for privacy and is not speaking about the incident, according to a family friend.
Foster died when he and another worker were refitting the valves on a compressor in the gas compression building in the hydrocracker unit Friday afternoon.
The second worker has been identified as Dave Williams, 30, a journeyman millwright from Cape Breton, N.S.
Williams was sent to hospital in critical condition with severe burns. He is now in the burn unit at the University of Alberta Hospital in Edmonton.
Williams's cousin, Kelly MacEachern, said he sustained third-degree burns to 90 per cent of the front of his body. She said the family has been told that Williams dug himself out of the rubble of the explosion.
Williams was not supposed to be working on Friday, she said, but "went in for an extra shift."
CEO Fang Zhi called the explosion "one of the darkest days in Nexen history."
A stop-work order is in place for the facility, about 75 kilometres south of Fort McMurray, outside hamlet of Anzac.
Nexen, the Alberta Energy Regulator, and Occupational Health and Safety are all investigating how the explosion occurred.