Andrew Bates
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
The Telegraph Journal
A coroner’s jury is recommending that equipment be used only as intended after a 27,000 kilogram trailer slipped off the front of an “offroad forklift” with a towing capacity of 1,000 kilograms, killing a Regina trucker at a New Brunswick wind farm construction site in 2024.
Regional coroner Danny Mallet convened an inquest Monday into the death of Matthew Brawn, 46, a Regina truck driver who was killed July 18, 2024, while working on the Neweg Energy Project in Springdale, east of Sussex.
Brawn was working for a trucking contractor at the site when he was pulled underneath a runaway trailer, Michel Cyr, investigations manager for WorkSafeNB, told the jury.
After more than an hour of deliberations Tuesday, the five-person jury ruled Brawn’s death an accident, and made recommendations around training for equipment operators, establishment of an active on-site supervisor and ensuring employees are appropriately informed about scope of work in morning meetings.
Brawn worked for Richards Transport, a subcontractor hired to deliver pieces of the project’s six wind turbines from Saint John to the construction site. There, they were to be assembled by Halifax-based Windturbine Construction Team for Natural Forces, the energy utility behind the project which also served as the general contractor, Cyr testified.
At the time of the accident, the RCMP said there was no “criminality component.” Windturbine Construction Team was fined $25,000 plus a $5,000 victim fine surcharge in January last year after pleading guilty to an Occupational Health and Safety Act charge of failing to ensure an industrial lift truck was not loaded past its capacity. A charge of failing to ensure the lift truck is used for its intended purpose was dropped.
The trailer used to haul the massive tower pieces had a front part and a rear part that carried the tower piece between them until it reached the site, Cyr said. There, the piece was loaded onto a saddle for WCT employees, who were in charge of unloading and installing The rear part of the trailer, weighing 27,000 kilograms with its own hydraulic steering, then needed to be turned around and attached to the front part before the truck could drive away, Cyr said.
But on this occasion, the truck’s attachment wasn’t used, and instead of a tow hitch, paint markings showed that the trailer’s A-shaped frame had been lifted by the forklift attachment on a “telehandler,” which is an “offroad forklift” cleared to tow 1,000 kg and lift 4,000 kg. The telehandler was used to pull the trailer uphill backwards. The manual says to face forwards uphill, Cyr said.
“It was being operated in a way it should not have been operated, pulling something that was many times above its capacity,” Cyr said.
The process of using the telehandler to move the trailer, saving a step, was “not approved” by the employer, but it was “acknowledged that it was being done all the time and accepted,” Cyr said, saying that there were no related procedures or training.
The jury heard from five contractors on site that day, including Robert James Scoffield, owner of Windturbine Construction Team, who testified by video that the incident took place during construction of the second of three turbines.
Scoffield told the inquest that telehandlers were on site to move “skids of equipment,” operated by unionized ironworkers certified to use the device. The equipment had been used to move the trailer before on level ground, he said, at distances of a few metres at a time using a hook on the lift’s central mast.
Each day starts with a 7 a.m. meeting to go over the day’s work, Scoffield said, with crews dispersing for site-specific safety talks. He testified that he was in a trailer listening on the radio when he heard someone call for 911.
Elmo Arsenault, an ironworker from Cocagne, testified that he had been working with WCT as a foreman in charge of a crew of three. When asked by prosecutor Patrick Wilbur, acting as lawyer for the coroner, he said telehandlers had been used “all the time” on the site of the first turbine as a “favour” to the truck drivers.
He said that after the tower piece was lowered onto the saddle, WCT’s “scope of work” was done, and he drove away to do paperwork. He told the jury he did not witness the incident. He said that use of the telehandler forks to move the trailer would not have to be cleared by him, and that the operator was in charge of how to use the equipment.
Dale Freisen, a long-haul trucker, had been driving the truck for Richards, with Brawn as the “steer man” for the trailer’s remote. Freisen testified by phone that usually, a bigger loader or telehandler would be used to move the trailer, and if that wasn’t available the truck could tow it.
It was the pair’s second or third run on that job, but they had worked together many times before, including a 12-load wind turbine job in the United States, Freisen testified. He said the pair were expected to be at the port in Saint John in the morning for pickup at 5 a.m., but Brawn had been 15 to 20 minutes late, with Freisen saying “for some reason, that day, he was off.”
Freisen said he told Brawn he would pull the front half of trailer to the road, disconnect it, and then back in with the truck to tow the back half out. After unhooking the front half, Freisen said he looked back to the work site to see the telehandler, described as a “little zoom boom,” struggling with two wheels off the ground, trying to pull the trailer.
“It should not have been used to pull it up, he should have just listened to what I said,” Freisen said, saying he “growled at him” on a two-way radio, “why did you f—ing do it this way?”
Freisen testified that he went over and tried to get a safety chain onto the trailer while Brawn was on the left side. Friesen said Brawn walked to the front of the trailer as the trailer’s “sheer weight pulled it off the forks.” He said that Brawn reached down for the lower of two valves in an attempt to engage the air brakes, and the “fenders pulled his coveralls,” Friesen testified.
The operator of the telehandler, Lawrence MacDonald, told an investigator in July that he was certified to use the equipment and had been asked by the foreman to help the truckers move the trailer. In audio played for the jury, he said that he backed up to use the hitch, but Brawn had told him “no no no, that’s broken, you’ve got to use the forks.”
“I told that guy, I’ve never done this before. so you’re going to have to tell me what to do,” MacDonald is heard saying.
MacDonald said that he had issues because of the steering configuration, and that they had been trying to reposition when Brawn walked to the front of the trailer, bent down and then started walking back up.
“I moved up a bit, the f—ing thing slipped off my forks,” MacDonald said, adding, “(Brawn) ran towards front of that trailer … it just started to move, that’s when I seen him go under the f—ing back wheels, and I don’t remember much after that.”
Community coroner Fred Fearon testified Tuesday that he was called around 11:30 a.m. and that Brawn’s body was sent to Moncton for an autopsy. He said the cause and time of death was blunt force trauma, at 11:11 a.m.
Cyr told the jury Monday that since trucking companies are federally regulated, a mechanical inspection of the trailer was outside of WorkSafeNB’s scope.
Environment and Social Development Canada said last year that its labour program was investigating the incident under the Canadian Labour Code. Brunswick News contacted the ministry for comment but did not hear back by deadline.
On Tuesday, Cyr continued his testimony, and said that despite jurisdictional issues, they were able to mandate that the telehandler could not be used on the site to move the trailer for the unloading of the remaining turbine pieces until releasing the scene after a week.
He said no hook was found on the telehandler’s central mast, and the telehandler did not have the appropriate rear tow hitch equipped at the time. He said investigators were not able to prove any issues with the trailer’s tailgate, which was chained into an upright position. He said no other evidence of a chain or strap to secure the telehandler was found on the site.
When asked by Wilbur about the slope, Cyr said they hired a surveyor who determined that there was a four per cent grade, and that the trailer moved 37 metres after rolling free.
WorkSafeNB recommended two charges against WCT, with Cyr saying they had a “role to play” in normalizing the use of telehandlers on site and in the lack of procedures at hand.
When asked by Wilbur if there would have been charges against Richards Transport if they were provincially regulated, Cyr said he would have engaged in “prevention,” including training, but said he didn’t know what the outcome would be.
The jury’s recommendations include reiterating in training that telehandler equipment is only to be used “as intended and as rated” and to establish a “clear, active on-site supervisor overseeing work.” The recommendations also suggested that the morning safety meetings cover topics including scope of work, use of equipment, chain of command, clear communication, right to refuse safe work, consequences of not following procedures and ensuring operators are competent and comfortable with the equipment.
Deputy chief coroner Emily Caissy told reporters that the coroner’s office “faced the same similar problem as WorkSafe” regarding jurisdiction. She said while they had a former employee of Richards, Freisen, as a witness, they could not compel anyone from company management to testify. She said that the office had been in contact with the family, but they were not present this week.
Caissy said the inquest “gives us a chance to look back … with the goal to prevent something similar from happening, whether from death or injuries.”
Matthew Brawn’s sister Erinn-Jane Brawn told Brunswick News by phone that she was “glad the inquest happened” but the family could not attend due to the distance involved. She said that with the federal authorities doing their own investigation, she hopes that any appropriate recommendations arising from that are made as well.
She said the jury’s instructions look like something that “should be expected” at a work site and said she felt that her brother would have been told what to do or how he’d seen it done, noting that he was the “low man on the totem pole.”
“I know he’d have been trying to do a good job that day,” Brawn said. “He was really proud of what he did with Richards, and everybody should get to come home from work.”
