Remembering a workplace tragedy
Memorial crowd included workers, victims’ family, and union officials
With several active investigations into the technical details of what happened a year ago, July 12, 2021, when five young men died as a construction crane collapsed during disassembly at a downtown Kelowna highrise, it’s easy to start forgetting the victims.
But Pam and Stephen Zook, their voices cracking, brought the human aspect of the tragedy back into sharp focus during a ceremony near the accident site Tuesday morning in front of a large memorial to their son, his workmates, and a stranger who worked next door.
“Whenever we get to talk about our son, it’s a good day,” Jared Zook’s mother said. “We will never stop talking about him. He is a part of our story.”
A diverse crowd of at least 200 first responders, construction workers, family members and union officials listened to theirs and other heart-wrenching survivor stories.
Pam painted a picture of a very young man who was quite shy until he got to know you, a reserved thinker who didn’t always have the blonde ’fro he was known for. “For a few years he rocked a blonde mullet until peer pressure from a five-year-old became too much and he
had to get a buzz cut,” she said.
Family nights were always a priority for the Edmonton native but Zook’s love of fun and games at times included paintball and firework wars, as well as laxative challenges with his friends, she told the crowd.
“Jared had a sense of humour that always lightened things up,” she said, her voice breaking. “Sure do miss that. Even when going through challenges that didn’t keep him from making others laugh with his witty comebacks and comments.”
His father Stephen described the mounting dread of the news that day and numb realization that it was his son’s photo police were asking for, his son’s crane that had collapsed, that it was his son who wasn’t answering his cellphone July 12, 2021.
That’s the day first responders of all stripes rushed to the Brooklyn high-rise on St. Paul Street around 11 a.m. only to find four construction workers caught up in the rubble of the destroyed crane and the equipment used to dismantled it.
Along with Zook, first responders found crane company workers Cailen Vilness, Eric Stemmer and Patrick Stemmer with fatal injuries.
It would take some more time to find the body of Brad Zawislak, lost under a collapsed ceiling and wall at an office building next door before the death toll became clear; five killed in one of the largest industrial accidents in modern provincial history.
Kelowna RCMP, the BC Coroners Service and WorkSafe BC all marked the anniversary of the accident by noting their respective ongoing investigations and that none of them have concluded.
Mounties in the serious crimes unit are looking into the circumstances of what happened.
“This is a complex investigation of what is being described as one of the largest workplace fatalities in B.C.’s history,” said Insp. Beth McAndie, an investigative services officer, in a press release.
“There is a significant amount of technical evidence for my team to analyze.”
WorkSafeBC said staff had been working with subject-matter experts and engineers examining crane components, timelines and work procedures during the crane’s dismantling as part of its investigation.
None of the agencies have given a date for the conclusion of their investigations.