It’s been just over a year since a Cape Breton man died while working at an oilsands facility in Alberta, and his family says they have yet to receive the answers they’re looking for.
David Williams, 30, was badly burned in an explosion at the Nexen Long Lake Facility in Fort McMurray in January 2016. He spent 10 days in a coma before he died.
The family says the company blamed Williams and another man, but they haven't heard much since.
“They won't give you no information,” said Bernice Williams, David’s mother. “They said, ‘We can't give it to you. It's private.’”
But that’s a claim the company denies.
"We have provided the grieving families with as much information as we are able to in relation to this incident,” a spokesperson of the company said in a statement to CTV News. “This was a tragic incident that has changed our organization, and we have taken several meaningful steps to improve our safety culture and safe work processes.”
“Our thoughts and deepest sympathies are with the families in this difficult time."
The family says they want to know why David was doing work in an area of the plant he was unfamiliar with on the day of the tragic accident. They also say he wasn't in the area where the actual explosion occurred, but at the door.
They say those questions have yet to be answered.
“I couldn't even get a paramedic number out of them,” Bernice Williams said. “They said that was private. My son was talking. I would like to know what he was saying and they said, ‘No it's private.’”
Alberta Occupational Health and Safety says its own investigation is still ongoing and won't release any details until it's done. Under its mandate, the agency has another year to decide if charges are warranted.
No matter the outcome, Bernice Williams says the pain will always be there.
“It's like hell,” she said. “That's what it's like. I live every day thinking about David. Every day.”
With files from CTV Atlantic’s Kyle Moore.
