Steelman– All over the site, you saw them – workers with climbing helmets, headlamps that look like they should be mounted on a 4x4, and climbing harnesses strong enough for two people.
That’s because indeed those harnesses are meant for just that – rescuing another person.
Maple Leak Environmental and Safety s was one of two safety contractors on site for the Plains Midstream Canada Steelman gas plant turnaround in mid-September. Their role was to act as a safety standby for “high angle” rescue and confined space rescue. They also were the first to go into confined spaced, using specialized probes to detect potentially hazardous atmospheres before other workers could go in.
Keith Anderson is the owner of Maple Leaf. When it comes to being a cowboy, he’s the real deal. “I’m a third generation rodeo cowboy and movie set wrangler, ” he said.
When he’s not running Maple Leaf, he supplies teams of horses for movies and the Calgary Exhibition & Stampede Board Parades throughout Western Canada.
“I’m a firefighter as well; volunteer and industrial.”
Between all his ventures, he admitted, “I don’t sleep a lot.”
“I used to be a steer wrestler, rode bulls and bareback horse. I still team rope with the coaching and mentoring of my brother-in-law, Saskatchewan born movie stuntman and coordinator Brent Woosley.”
Anderson is also a movie set teamster. As a young man, he played junior hockey.
That’s pretty impressive for someone with 51 years under his belt. So it’s not a big leap, pun intended, that someone with such an adventurous background would own and operate a company specializing in some of the most challenging aspects of the safety sector in the oilpatch. They go where others shouldn’t dare.
“We’re supplying National Fire Protection Association tech level rope rescue or high angle rescue and confined space,” Anderson said. “On top of that we provide atmospheric testing and rescue plans. We ensure we follow what Plains Midstream has set out for safe work permits and conduct hazard assessments.”
That includes identifying and recording of hazards and introducing mitigation plans.
Maple Leaf had 12 people working at Steelman, all qualified rope technicians. What type of person signs up for this sort of work?
Layton Bruce, one of their senior hands, works on rigging concert stages for concerts during the company’s slow times in the summer. Over half are mountain climbers.
“Another part of the crew loves spelunking,” Anderson said. Spelunking is essentially like mountain climbing, but in caves.
Quite fitting, both the mountain climbing and spelunking, since one is working on ropes at heights, and another is working with ropes in dark, often confining spaces.
On this day workers from another company scaled the 290-foot tall flare stack, with the intention of replacing the burner tip at the top. Maple Leaf had rope technician’s right there if needed, ready to get involved at as soon as they’re cleared to jump in and perform a rescue.
So what would such a rescue look like?
First of all, before anyone does any climbing in the first place, a pre-job rescue plan is put together, to be enacted by the Plains incident commander. In this case, there’s a four-page rescue plan just for the flare stack operation.
“We would have up to four fellows on the ground. One would climb up with a main line and belay line,” Anderson said. The ropes would be anchored with pickup trucks parked perpendicular to the tower. The rescuer would climb above the person in distress and rig up two access points with pulleys, one for each rope.
“He can climb pretty fast. I used to be pretty darn fast in my day,” Anderson said.
The rescuer would then connect to the person in distress, and guide lowering him to ground using those two lines.
“He’ll direct from on top, lift and lower (the victim),” Anderson said.
An emergency medical technician, part of the Maple Leaf crew, would attend to the victim on the ground and emergency evacuation would take place as needed.
A vessel operation starts before anyone has the chance to get into distress, by having a Maple Leaf specialist go into that vessel first, testing the atmosphere.
Anderson pulled out two specialized gas monitors. They’re much larger and more capable than the four-head personal monitors worn by individual workers. They are capable of handling much higher concentrations of the gases being monitored without blowing a sensor. They can also provide detailed gas levels as opposed to simply an alarm. Those readings can be output in percentage per volume, not just parts per million. Each is also a pump, drawing air in, as opposed to hoping by chance that a whiff of gas floats past the sensor. The pointy end can be stuck in nooks and crannies as needed.
Before anyone goes into a confined space, it is crucial to “blind and blank” the vessel, cutting off all possibilities of hazardous gasses making their way into the vessel during operations. That means separating pipes at inlets and outlets and putting blanks – solid caps, over entrances, as one method of applying lockouts.
Pre-job discussions and a toolbox talk take place. The vessel is purged with nitrogen.
An air trailer, with numerous compressed air tanks that connect to a manifold to supply breathing air via hoses to each worker involved. Maple Leaf’s air trailers use higher-capacity tanks than usual, Anderson noted, allowing them to supply more air. They also can be used to refill self-contained breathing apparatus tanks.
Going in first into a potentially hazardous environment is not something to be taken lightly, either. “There’s a lot of training in these people. You can’t take your mask off. There’s no scratching an itch.”
“Our designated person will enter that confined space and check for readings, i.e. low explosion limit and benzene.”
Other gases include oxygen, carbon monoxide and hydrogen sulphide.
One of the most important people is the one standing outside.
“By law, there’s one safety watch person whose job is to notify. They can never go in or be used for rescue,” he said.
If something does go wrong, and the rescue plan is activated by the incident commander, one or possibly two people will be sent in to rescue the downed victim. This will typically involve assessing and packaging the injured. Rescue can be as quick as hooking up to the injured person’s harness, to lift, lower or drag while the other rescuers themselves will be protected with supplied or self-contained air if required.
They might have to use a specialized short spine board called a Yates spec pack to stabilize the victim. The key thing is to get the victim to the hole quickly, and then out and down to a safe area and evacuated.
