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Fatal accident in Storm Bay

Logging

A woman from Victoria died in a logging accident in Storm Bay on Sunday, July 13, but exactly what happened is still unknown.

Storm Bay is about 21 km up the inlet from Sechelt.

Scott McCloy, director of government, community and media relations with WorkSafeBC said the accident happened at about 9:30 a.m. last Sunday.

“There were a number of people at this location including two fallers. The two fallers appear at this point to have been working across from each other falling trees. One worker ran out of gas and went to refuel when he heard cries for help and screaming,” McCloy said. “He went to investigate and found what appears to be a non-worker had been struck by a tree. We don’t know the status of the two fallers at the moment, whether they were contractors or employees of a company or whether the deceased person is a worker at this time. Regardless WorkSafeBC has officers on scene.”

He said the remoteness of the water access only property in Storm Bay is making the investigation take longer than usual.

“As you can imagine it takes quite a while to arrange transportation to get in there but we are there now, we are awaiting more information,” McCloy said.

The identity of the deceased was released by the coroners’ office on Wednesday afternoon as Sherry Belle Bennett, 45, of Victoria.

WorkSafeBC was continuing to investigate the accident as Coast Reporter went to press Thursday morning.

“I think that from our perspective this is a tragedy. Whenever a worker dies or what may turn out to be a non-worker, we don’t know, something has gone wrong and that means we have to become involved as our investigation team and this is very, very difficult every time this happens,” McCloy said. “Our fervent goal is to try to reduce the number of not only serious injuries but fatalities from trauma in this province and that’s why we do these investigations is to learn from what happened and try to prevent those things in the future.”