Nineteen years after her father’s death, Lisa Kadosa remembers clearly the phone call that changed her life forever.
“There's been an accident. It's really bad,” she recalled her mom telling her from the other end of the line. “You need to come home. Your father's dead.”
Robert “Sea Wolf” Nesbitt was a 57-year-old miner with 37 years of experience who adored his family, loved sailing and was, by all accounts, a conscientious worker.
On March 6, 2006, Nesbitt had been working at the 2600-foot level of Vale Inco’s Stobie Mine in Sudbury when he fell off a platform, and a piece of equipment came down on top of him, killing him instantly.
In the days and months that followed, Kadosa and her family would learn more details about how the tragedy could have been prevented. But in that moment after her mom delivered the news, all Kadosa could think about was that her beloved father — “the glue that kept the family together,” she said — was now gone.
“In hindsight, people might think how cold that was,” Kadosa said of her mother’s words in front of a rapt crowd at the Workplace Safety North conference on May 1.
“But I don't know how I would ever tell my daughter that her best friend, her rock, her shoulder to cry on was not coming home.”
As with any workplace incident, there were multiple investigations, by the police, the company and the Ministry of Labour, as well as a coroner’s inquest.
The police quickly dismissed the idea of homicide, while the ministry concluded that it was a no-fault accident — neither the employee nor the employer could be found responsible, Kadosa said.
A day after the release of the coroner’s report, which took place three years after Nesbitt’s death, a Vale Inco boss at the time reached out to the family, calling it a “freak accident.”
“But in our mind, we just needed to know why,” said Kadosa, who relocated to Ottawa more than two decades ago. “Why did this happen?”
According to the inquest, Nesbitt showed up for roll call at 7 a.m. before proceeding to Stobie’s 2600 level alone, which wasn’t uncommon for the experienced miner, she noted. There was even a protocol in place requiring him to check in every 10 minutes because he was working alone.
Because the area had previously been deemed dangerous, Nesbitt was using remote control technology to muck out the area (removing excavated rock). He was doing his work from a portable stand outfitted with a sling that enabled the worker to move around in the bucket of the scooptram, a type of front end loader.
Normally the sling would have been removed by the previous operator, but it had instead been tucked into the bucket, which was considered common practice at the time, Kadosa said.
It slipped and caught on the scooptram, but Nesbitt didn’t see it, and the stand rose.
Nesbitt then let go of the remote controls, but it had a 10-second delay, and the stand continued rising.
Nesbitt fell backwards and the sling snapped, bringing the two-tonne stand on top of him.
“You know, they tell us that his death was instantaneous, but I just see him watching his life flash before his eyes,” said Kadosa, her words catching in her throat.
It was during the inquest that Kadosa was introduced to Threads of Life, a non-profit organization committed to supporting people who have been affected by workplace injury, illness or death, and preventing future tragedies from occurring.
After the organization supported her and her family through Nesbitt’s death, Kadosa now volunteers with the organization with the hope that sharing her story serves as a cautionary tale for workers and employers.
Ideally, society would get to a place where workplace fatalities, occupational disease and injury are morally, socially and economically unacceptable, she added.
In the aftermath of her father’s death, a number of recommendations came out of the inquiry.
Stands like the one her father had been using are no longer portable, and the remote-control tech he was using no longer has a 10-second delay, she noted.
One of the jurors recommended that any changes coming as a result of the inquiry be named for her father. Though she never learned the outcome of that suggestion, “it was a nice sentiment,” she said.
If there’s a message she wants workers and employers to carry with them, it’s that everyone has a role to play in ensuring a healthy and safe workplace, from the CEOs to the supervisors to the workers on the floor.
“It needs to be a culture in an organization that employees are aware that it's okay to speak up and it's okay to report a potential hazard, and it's not to be frowned upon,” she said.
In the report prepared by Vale Inco, it was noted that the same issue that took her father’s life had been reported four times previously. Those “near misses” are equally important, she said, because those are the opportunities to act to prevent future tragedies.
In her final thought, Kadosa pleaded with people not to take their lives or those of their coworkers for granted so they don’t have to suffer the same loss that she and her family have.
“The next time you're working and you see something isn't safe, stop and report it to your local health and safety department,” Kadosa implored. “Don't be afraid of slowing down production or having a fear of reprisal.
“Remember Robert ‘Sea Wolf’ Nesbitt, a father, a husband, a brother, a son who will never see his family again because of a common practice not to report potential hazards.”
WSN is a not-for-profit health and safety association funded by the provincial government to provide approved health and safety training and services to the mining and forest products industries. The organization's two-day Mining Health and Safety Conference took place in Sudbury April 30 and May 1.
