Nearly five years after a crane collapse claimed five lives in Kelowna, B.C., the province has announced new safety measures aimed at preventing another disaster.
“We miss our boy,” said Steven Zook, the father of Jared Zook. “There’s always an empty place that could never be filled by anything else.”
Jared Zook was among the five men killed when a crane at a downtown construction site came crashing down on July 12, 2021.
Steven Zook told Global News he is happy that change to improve safety will be implemented but the news comes with mixed emotions.
“The disappointment, that huge disappointment in the fact that they were not in place before this accident,” Zook said.
The tragic crane collapse also killed Jared Zook’s construction colleagues Cailen Vilness, Patrick Stemmer and Eric Stemmer.
It also took the life of Brad Zawislak, who was working in an adjacent office building at the time.
The new rules announced Tuesday aim to strengthen oversight and accountability.
Under the new measures, contractors who erect, dismantle, maintain or repair cranes will now have to be licensed and obtain a permit ahead of any crane work.
“This is highly skilled and technical work and highly risky work and we need a much more robust education framework for the other people who are doing this work,” said B.C.’s minister of labour, Jennifer Whiteside.
“To ensure that not only workers are safe on construction sites but that the public is safe. We have construction sites in the middle of the city. We have people walking around them.”
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The government is also bringing in stronger certification and training for crane operators.
“Those occupations will become essentially ticketed trades, providing much more support and education for the workers who do that work,” Whiteside said.
While pleased to see the new safety measures, Chris Vilness, who lost his 23-year old son Cailen in the collapse, said the changes should have come a lot sooner.
“Did it take a while? Yeah,” he said. “I think this should have been a quick reaction.”
But whether the new measures would have saved his son, Vilness can’t say.
“Without actually having any facts, it’s really hard to comment,” Vilness said.
it’s a sentiment echoed by Zook.
“We have to date not received any final report regarding the accident, why it happened, what happened, so I couldn’t honestly answer that one,” Zook said.
That’s because the families continue to wait for answers on what caused the collapse.
While both WorkSafe BC and the RCMP completed their separate investigations in 2023, the findings remain sealed as the BC Prosecution Service (BCPS) continues charge assessment, a process that has now passed the two-year mark.
It was February 2024 when RCMP submitted a recommended charge of criminal negligence causing death to BCPS after completing its investigation.
In an email to Global News on Thursday, BCPS stated, “This complex police investigation and charge assessment process is ongoing, and we do not have a timeline for completion.”
“We do not ever want to see this potentially be swept under the rug,” Zook said. “As families, we need to know what happened that day, why it happened.”
Vilness said without those answers, closure isn’t possible.
“It’s really tough for me to accept the fact that it’s almost five years and we’re still sitting in knowledge that we had day one,” Vilness said. “That part of it is not acceptable for me and it’s really hard to swallow.”
According to the province. seven people have died in BC in crane-related incidents in the past five years.
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