I'm Mike Bertrand,Investigating Officer with Work SafeBC.

In sawmills, cleaning out saws and clearing jams are done all the time.

At two mills, these tasks went terribly wrong.

The first mill produces fence boards.

On the production line, logs are cut into cants by a Scragg saw.

The cants are pulled along the production line by a log chain.

The sawyer feeds the cants into the edger saw, which cuts them into boards.

These boards are then trimmed into fence pickets.

The accident happened close to lunch time.

Power to the saws was turned off and the log chain was reversed to pull the cants away from the saws.

Cedar bark and sawdust had built up near the edger blades.

To prevent the blades from binding while cutting the cant, the sawyer had to frequently clear this debris.

Intending to clean the debris, the sawyer leaned over and reached into the area next to the blades.

The saw had been turned off but the blades were still spinning.

The fast running blades cut off the sawyer’s arm.

The second mill produces hardwood boards.

Here, logs are also sawed into cants.

The cants are then fed into an edger saw, which slices them into boards.

Just before the accident, a cant got stuck in the edger saw.

The supervisor and edger-man worked together to free the cant.

First, the edger was shut off, and locked-out, then its cover was raised.

The fingers inside of the edger that keep debris away from the blades were removed, the cant was then manually backed off the blades.

The cover was lowered, the saw was restarted, and the cant was run through.

The fingers had to be reinstalled.

The supervisor shut down the saw, locked it out, and raised its cover.

He turned away from the edger to get some tools.

The edger-man climbed up into the saw to help reinstall the fingers.

Although the power had been turned off, the blades were still rotating.

They cut off the edger-man's right leg below the knee.

In both accidents, a lack of supervision, safety training, and safe work procedures, played a roll.

But, the key cause was the failure to follow proper lock-out procedures.

Lock-out protects workers during maintenance.

The edgers in both mills required, but did not have, specific, written, lock-out procedures.

With edgers, lock-out means shutting off the saw, locking out the power source, waiting for the blades to stop, then testing that the lock-out is effective.

Lock-out. Make sure the blades have been stopped before working on them.

Don't let what happened to these workers, happen to you.