Ottawa overreacting to whale sighting, N.B. group says

Firefighters and police look on following an explosion in Mount Pearl, N.L., on Tuesday. Mount Pearl Mayor Dave Aker says he lives about a kilometre from the business and felt the entire house shake when it happened.

It was, says Stefania Butler, like a scene from a movie.

First, a sudden, massive bang. Then, debris everywhere — and the roof flew off the building across the street at Trimac National Tank Services.

Butler’s office knick-knacks fell off the wall as the building started shaking.

“I was sitting here working away and all of a sudden the debris went,” Butler said Tuesday from Billard’s Trucking, across the street from Trimac in the St. John’s, N.L., suburb of Mount Pearl.

“It was just like something you’d see in a movie. I was very surprised more people weren’t hurt.”

The Royal Newfoundland Constabulary said nine people were believed to be inside Trimac during the blast at 8:20 a.m. local time.

Const. Geoffrey Higdon said three people were taken to hospital, but he couldn’t speak to the nature of their injuries.

The roof of the building was blown off, with insulation and metal scraps strewn across the parking lot. Some of the large metal pieces landed dangerously close to fuel tanks stored nearby.

Rick Dehann, acting deputy chief with the St. John’s Regional Fire Department, said the people taken to hospital were moving about when he arrived.

Dehann said he was amazed to find all employees outside and accounted for, in relatively good shape.

“Looking at the extent of damage to the building, there’s always the foreboding I guess in the back of your mind that there’s significant injury and or casualties,” said Dehann. “But to our amazement and utter joy, I guess, the people were safe.”

Acting platoon chief Scott Tilley said it appears the employees were working on a fuel tank that contained gasoline or a petroleum product and the fumes may be to blame for the explosion.

A fishermen’s group says the federal government is jumping the gun with a costly fisheries closure in the Bay of Fundy following the sighting of a single North Atlantic right whale.

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans says the area in Grand Manan Basin will be closed to fixed-gear fishing from 11:59 p.m. Thursday until further notice.

The closure affects lobster, crab, groundfish, herring and mackerel licences.

But Brian Guptill, president of the Grand Manan Fishermen’s Association, said the government was too quick to act.

“A vessel ... sees one right whale that is moving, not stopped and feeding, and they shut the fishery down because of that. The airplane was up this morning and couldn’t find a whale anywhere,” he said.

Guptill said DFO should take a more measured approach.

“It’s a matter of the number of whales or number of sightings. If you just see one whale and it’s travelling ... the whale could be gone before you get the traps out of the water,” he said.

Guptill said the closure is costly for 30 to 40 fishermen who will lose the last week of the season in that area.

Ottawa says all gear must be removed before Thursday’s closure, Right whales are seen in the south Gulf of Saint Lawrence in this May 5, 2018, handout photo.

and notice will be given prior to the reopening.

The right whale population suffered 17 losses last year — 12 of them in Canadian waters — likely due to rope entanglements and ship collisions.

Guptill said the government is overlooking the effective protection measures that Bay of Fundy fishermen have taken.

“We’ve had a right whale mitigation strategy and we’ve been working to have no impact on the whales since 2006. There hasn’t been a known entanglement since that time,” he said.

So far this year, the government has closed a number of East Coast fishing areas, mostly in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and fishermen have complained to Fisheries Minister Dominic LeBlanc about lost opportunities.