Eastway Tank, owner plead guilty to three health and safety act charges

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Eastway Tank and its owner, Neil Greene, were fined a total of $850,000 on Friday after pleading guilty to three health and safety act charges laid in connection with a workplace explosion that killed six people.

It was one of the largest fines ever imposed against a medium-sized business under Ontario’s occupational health and safety act.

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In issuing his sentence, Ontario Court Justice Mitch Hoffman said the fine set a new “high bar” for such cases. He told court that employers mainly control workplaces, which must be made safe for employees.

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“People must be able to go home after work,” he said.

Lawyer Donald Bayne had earlier entered two guilty pleas on behalf of Eastway and one plea on behalf of Greene.

Friday’s court hearing represented the first opportunity for the families of those killed in the explosion to understand what went wrong on that tragic day two years ago.

In an agreed statement of fact, court heard that a “wet test” at the Merivale Road plant went terribly wrong on Jan. 13, 2022.

Wet tests are commonly used in the truck industry to assess highway fuel tanks for leaks, along with their plumbing and hoses. Dyed diesel fuel is typically used in a wet test.

Court heard that the diesel fuel used in the wet test conducted inside the main shop at Eastway had been contaminated by gasoline, greatly increasing the chance that its fuel vapours would explode.

The Ontario Fire Marshall investigation concluded that a gasoline-air vapour explosion occurred inside Eastway’s main shop.

It could not identify what ignited the explosion, but said it might have been triggered by mechanical spark or static electricity.

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The initial explosion triggered a second, larger explosion that brought down Eastway’s roof.

Matthew Kearney, a technician, and Tanner Clement, another Eastway worker, were near the front of the shop and survived the initial blasts. Both men caught fire and other workers came to their aid.

The men were taken to hospital, where Kearney later died of his injuries. Clement survived serious burns to his face, neck, hands and lungs and offered a victim-impact statement in court on Friday.

“I am mentally scarred for life,” he told court.

David McCaskill, a lawyer with the Ontario Ministry of Labour, Training and Skills Development, told court that Eastway ultimately “failed to take every precaution reasonable in the circumstances for the protection of workers.”

“The defendant failed to ensure that diesel fuel to be used for wet testing of trucks was not contaminated with gasoline or any other flammable liquid or substance,” McCaskilll said.

As director of the company, Greene failed to take all reasonable care to ensure that Eastway used diesel fuel that was not contaminated, McCaskill told court.

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“Eastway did not have adequate procedures and training relating to the handling and storage of the fuel in the workplace,” McCaskill said, reading the agreed statement of facts.

According to facts presented in court, the Ontario Fire Marshall concluded that the diesel fuel used in the fatal wet test was contaminated by two sources of gasoline. Some of the contaminated fuel came from diesel used to test another tanker the previous day; contaminated fuel was also found in Eastway’s outdoor storage tanks.

The deal announced Friday came more than two years after an explosion and fire ripped through the main shop of Eastway Tank’s Merivale Road facility, killing six employees.

It was among the deadliest workplace incidents in Ottawa history.

Bayne characterized Eastway Tank as a safety-minded, family-oriented firm, and presented a series of character-reference letters that lauded Greene as a hard-working, diligent, generous and community-minded family man.

“Neil Greene and Eastway have chosen to take responsibility for regulatory offences,” Bayne said, adding that the guilty pleas obviated the need for a long and difficult trial.

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Eastway and Greene, he noted, had no previous occupational health and safety act convictions during more than 50 years of operation.

Bayne asked the court for 120 days in order to pay the imposed fines.

The judge fined Eastway $300,000 each on two health and safety act charges, and Greene $80,00 on a third charge. Hoffman also imposed a 25 per cent victim surcharge on the fines.

Individuals convicted under the province’s health and safety act can be jailed for up to one year — jail terms are rare — and fined as much as $100,000. Corporations can be fined up to $1.5 million.

The case had been scheduled for a two-month trial, but in March it was revealed that a plea deal was in the works.

A family-owned business launched in 1968, Eastway Tank built, refurbished and serviced fuel and water tanker trucks. The work involved welding, sheet metal, painting, metering, electrical wiring and the repeated handling of flammable liquids.

It had 28 full and part-employees when the exlosion occurred.

Transport Canada certified Eastway Tank to manufacture, assemble, repair, inspect and test certain kinds of tanker trucks used for the transportation of dangerous goods.

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For more than two years, the families of those who died in the explosion received little or no official information about what caused the tragedy.

Some former employees, however, raised questions about the firm’s approach to safety, and former Eastway employee Josh Bastien said his father, Rick, was so concerned about someone getting hurt at Eastway that he was looking for another job at the time of the accident.

Rick Bastien, 57, a mechanic and welder, was one of the six killed in the Eastway explosion. The others who died were: Matthew Kearney, 36, a service supervisor and calibration technician; electrician and airplane engineer Etienne Mabiala, 59; welder and Algonquin College graduate Kayla Ferguson, 26; electrician Danny Beale, 29; and Russell McLellan, 43, Eastway’s plant manager.

The Eastway employees were just resuming work after lunch on Jan. 13, 2022, when a tanker truck exploded in the main shop.

The blast triggered a massive fire that took four and a half hours for firefighters to bring under control. Officials at one point feared the blaze could spread to a nearby fuel depot on Merivale Road.

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Criminal charges remain a possibility in the case.

In a statement Thursday, the Ottawa Police Service said its parallel investigation into the fatal workplace accident was continuing and was not affected by the outcome of the health and safety charges.

The explosion and fire at Eastway was the city’s worst industrial accident since August 1966, when the Heron Road bridge collapsed, killing nine construction workers.

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