Whether or not Robert David MacLeod suffered a diabetic seizure will be a focal point of a coroner’s inquest into his death on Oct. 30, 2003, at Inco’s Garson Mine.
Assistant Crown attorney Len Walker told a three-woman, two-man jury that evidence will be produced that will show MacLeod, who was a supervisor with Dynatech Corp., suffered a seizure and was rushed to hospital three weeks before he accidentally fell 30 feet at the number five shaft at Garson Mine.
Dynatech is a mining contractor used often by Inco to blast ore at various underground operations in Greater Sudbury.
MacLeod, who is originally from Nova Scotia, had worked for Dynatech for several years.
Walker told the jury MacLeod suffered another seizure in June 2003 and fell to the floor at work while working on the same blasting project at Garson Mine, said Walker.
MacLeod also suffered another seizure and collapsed inside Inco’s Coleman Mine in August of 1997.
A coroner’s inquest is mandatory in all mining deaths in Ontario. The inquest into MacLeod’s death is expected to last until Thursday or Friday.
The first witness to testify, Conrad Cyr, told the jury he and MacLeod were working at opposite ends of a Galloway, a huge cylindrical device used to haul equipment and muck as part of the shaft mining process.
Cyr testified he was the first person to see MacLeod had fallen down the shaft and was seriously injured.
“I started ringing the (emergency) bells...I knew there was an accident...I saw Dave lying there...it wasn’t a pretty site,” said Cyr.
MacLeod started his shift like he did every shift by doing a safety inspection and making sure all the equipment to be used that day was in good working order, said Cyr.
He doesn’t know exactly what happened, but he believes MacLeod was sitting near the headway to the Galloway when he fell.
It’s his belief MacLeod was sitting on a five-gallon bucket, which was found near MacLeod’s body, and fell onto the top of a steel “clam” used to grab muck at the bottom of the shaft, said Cyr.
The clam deposits muck into huge buckets to be brought up the Galloway to surface.
“Deep down in my heart...I feel he was at the very top of the Galloway and would have fallen from there,” he said.
Other workers have speculated he fell from a lower part of the Galloway near a level where an electrical panel was located, but he still believes MacLeod fell from the top, said Cyr.
A huge jumbo drill used to dig through ore was still on minutes after rescue crews arrived to try and revive MacLeod and bring him to surface. Cyr said it has always puzzled him why that machine was still running.
MacLeod had told him many times the jumbo drill should not be operational without water being easily accessible as it would overheat quickly, and why it was on after the accident still confuses him, said Cyr.
“That’s something that’s been puzzling me since that day,” he said.
Even though he knew MacLeod was diabetic and had suffered seizures before, he appeared to be in very good health and good spirits that day, said Cyr.
“I didn’t notice anything different from any other day,” he said.
When an operator told him he noticed blood on the clam, he signalled the emergency bells and was upset a stretcher wasn’t sent down more quickly, said Cyr.
There was chaos after he sounded the emergency bells and workers scattered looking for MacLeod, but it shouldn’t have taken as long for help to arrive as it did, he said.
Cyr said compared to lateral and drift mining, shaft mining has always been considered the most dangerous method, but he acknowledged MacLeod was an experienced miner who was safety conscious at all times.
He and MacLeod, like all Dynatech workers, wore full fall arrest systems during every shift, said Cyr.
He doesn’t know whether or not MacLeod’s fall arrest system was “tied off” to a piece of steel in the minutes before he fell, said Cyr.
A total of seven witnesses are expected to testify at the inquest.
The jury will be asked to make recommendations they believe can prevent a similar accident from taking place under similar circumstances.
