While details are minimal to this point, the BC Forest Safety Council is reporting a logging truck driver was killed outside of Logan Lake sometime Monday.

According to the Safety Council’s bulletin issued Wednesday, the person was killed December 16th while attempting to “tow a log truck that had spun out on an icy road.”

The details on a specific location, as well as the circumstances surrounding the person’s death, have not been detailed.

“This incident is under investigation and details are still to be determined; so contributing factors to the incident are not available,” noted the Forest Safety Council.

The Fatality Alert does go on to provide a series of ‘safety points’ for logging truck drivers.

Those ‘safety points’ suggest logging truck drivers recognize “upset conditions,” such as a vehicle getting stuck, while also recommending that company procedures be followed when “guiding vehicles that are backing up.”

The ‘points’ also say that when “working around and under trucks or mobile equipment,” those who are involved want to “take steps to prevent unexpected movement.”

The report also adds that drivers should be “following lock out procedures and chocking wheels.”

Council also warns of in-bush dangers

A separate bulletin issued by the BC Forest Safety Council this week also highlights the dangers that forestry workers face while on the front-lines of felling operations.

It points to two separate, non-fatal incidents involving heavy machinery being used in different operations in the Southern Interior this fall, including one near Scotch Creek in the Shuswap.

Both involve harvesting in steep-sloped areas.

While precise details are not offered in the report, it does suggest the first incident — believed to be the one in the North Shuswap — took place sometime in October.

“While tethered and ‘walking’ up a steep slope [55% grade] back onto the road above,” said the report in reference to a so-called feller buncher, which are individually-operated, tracked units which quickly cut down and sort harvested trees.  “One of the buncher’s tracks inadvertently drove over a high stump and the machine tipped onto its side.”

The other is believed to have taken place in the Sugar Lake area of the North Okanagan, northeast of Vernon, seemingly in the early part of November, as a citation on the bulletin links to further safety recommendations in the Council’s “Alert of the Month” dated to November 14, 2024.

This one was connected to a shovel logging operation where a so-called hoe chucker also had issues on an extreme-grade slope.

“Chucking timber on a steep slope [55-60% grade], one of the machine’s tracks slipped on shallow rock concealed by the topsoil,” noted the Safety Council bulletin.  “This caused the other track to catch on a stump, turning the machine before it tipped over onto its side.”

“The machine was walking down the slope on the same path it had travelled without incident, [after] going up the hill,” added the notification.

The BC Forest Safety Council says in both cases, neither operator was hurt, and both of the machines were put back into service without any serious damage.

Industry safety seemingly improving

The death of the logging truck driver near Logan Lake on Monday is the 2nd ‘harvesting’ death the BC Forest Safety Council has recorded this year.

The other dates back to October 2, 2024 on northern Vancouver Island, when the float plane the forestry worker was in overturned while making a landing near Port Hardy.

While neither death is related directly to the actual ‘harvesting’ process, the Council does count deaths which occur not only on the front lines of the operations, but also the transportation too and from work.

Any deaths related to the transportation and transfer of the raw logs is also included in the analysis.

The Nanaimo-based BC Forestry Safety Council is an industry-led Association born from task force recommendations dating back 20 years ago, when the forest sector in BC was averaging 25 fatalities per-year during in-field operations.

Figures compiled since then show that while there was a dramatic spike of 35 industry-related deaths in 2005 — a year after the industry task force was formed — the number of deaths attributed directly to forest harvesting operations in BC has dropped significantly since then.

From 2006 to 2022, BC Forest Safety Council statistics show the average number of annual deaths dropped from around 25 down to under 8, according to WorkSafe BC.

Those numbers are specific to the harvesting side of the industry.

Fatalities related to wood processing and manufacturing show an average of less than one person dying per year over the same 17 year analysis.

Numbers related to on-the-job injuries in the forest industry do appear to be on the decline as well.

“The primary contributors to time loss and serious injuries remained consistent within the harvesting sector,” said the Council in its 2023 annual report.  “The leading causes were attributed to four primary activities:  log hauling, manual tree falling, equipment operation and tree planting.”

The rates of injury are based on the number of “work years” lost.

The number of industry fatalities are based on raw numbers of deaths, but don’t provide a comparison based on the number of people working in the forest sector year-by-year.