March 19, 2010

In the Hogg's Hollow and swing-stage disasters, immigrant workers met brutal deaths.

Hogg's Hollow tragedy | 50 years later

1960 calamity has parallels to recent swing-stage accident

‘Today we still need improvements,’ says union manager

VINCE VERSACE

staff writer

Fifty years after the Hogg’s Hollow tragedy, much has changed in Ontario workplace health and safety. But the recent Christmas Eve swing-stage tragedy is a reminder more still needs to be done.

“On Christmas Eve, you have four of five young immigrant men plunging to their deaths. In Hogg’s Hollow you have five young immigrant men buried alive,” says John Cartwright, president, Toronto and York Region Labour Council. “It is really like going back half a century with these two instances.”

One project was a civil tunneling project while the other was an apartment restoration project.

But the similarities cannot be ignored, say various industry representatives. There were immigrant workers in both instances. At Hogg’s Hollow, investigations revealed a lack of proper training, supervision and safety protocol execution. While the jury is still out on the swing-stage accident of three months ago, many feel preliminary information is leading towards the same deadly mix of circumstances. Fifty years apart and the same outcome: multiple losses of life on a Toronto construction site.

“At the candle light vigil for the swing-stage workers, it brought to my mind the five workers who died at Hogg’s Hollow,” says Carmen Principato, LIUNA Local 506 business manager.

“Today we still need improvements. When I go on jobs with my stewards and foremen, I make sure to tell them not to work if they see something is not safe.”

For one of the Hogg’s Hollow rescuers, the news of the Christmas Eve swing-stage tragedy was frustrating.

“There is always talk, talk, talk and people still break rules and are not safe,” says Nester Buchinski, a retired tunneller, who was one of four volunteers who tried to save the five Hogg’s Hollow victims.

John Stefanini, former Local 183 business manager and one in a group of union leaders active 40 years ago in improving provincial health and safety standards, found the swing-stage accident a bewildering event considering current safety regulations in place.

“It is more or less like when you hear about a genocide happening now, you figure people should have learned after the horrors of the Second World War but they still happen,” says Stefanini.

“Accidents like the swing-stage one should not have happened.”

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