Justice for tragic Ronnie
Family of hypothermia victim hail fines on wind farm firms
The family of a wind farm worker who froze to death have welcomed huge fines imposed on the companies who allowed the tragedy to happen.
Ronnie Alexander, 74, died at the Afton wind farm near New Cumnock after being stranded during severe weather – his family say they are “gobsmacked” at the tough fines handed out at Ayr Sheriff Court.
Security guard Ronnie, from Kilmarnock, succumbed to hypothermia after his cabin generator failed, leaving him without electricity or heat.
Employers CSM Facilities and wind farm bosses Farrans Construction were convicted at an earlier hearing at Ayr Sheriff Court over the death after they admitted to health and safety breaches.
The companies were fined a total of £868,800 for their health and safety failures which led to Ronnie’s death.
In a statement released through Digby Brown Solicitors, the family of Ronnie said: “We had to wait years just to get the conviction but now that we have the sentence, we can say we have justice.
“We are gobsmacked at the level of fine handed down by the sheriff – we certainly welcome it.
“But ultimately it is all bittersweet because at the end of the day we are still without Ronnie and no punishment can change that.
“We’d just like to thank all our friends and family for their support during this time but now just wish to have our privacy respected as we come to terms with everything.”
In the wake of the conviction, heartbroken widow Mary, 81, from Kilmarnock, said: “Losing Ronnie was the hardest thing our family has experienced.
“He was loving, hard-working, kind spirited and he doted on his grandkids that’s why he was still working in his 70s because he wanted to spoil his family.
“My husband died in January 2018 and November of that year would have been our 50th wedding anniversary.
“To have lived through so much together and have him taken because his boss failed on basic, common sense procedures is just beyond us all.
“While we now know what happened that night, it pains us to imagine what Ronnie felt- not just the physical struggle but enduring it alone. Because of this, we’ll never really have peace or closure.”
The tragic incident on January 21, 2018 happened after the Met Office issued a yellow ‘be aware’ warning for heavy snow.
The alarm was raised around 8.30pm after Mr Alexander failed to return home from a 12-hour shift and relatives failed to get an answer on his mobile phone.
Mr Alexander was airlifted to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary but, despite the efforts of intensive care staff, he died later on January 22 - his cause of death was confirmed as hypothermia.
It is thought Mr Alexander left his cabin to try and reach a second site cabin around one kilometre away in the hope it still had power so he could survive the night.
Ronnie is survived by his wife, two daughters and three grandsons.
Daughter Laura Alexander, 48, hopes the convictions will mean improvements are made to ensure the safety of workers employed in remote locations.
Mr Alexander was employed by CSM Facilities based in Glasgow. They were fined £100,800.
However, Belfast firm Farrans Construction - which was building the wind farm at the time of the incident was responsible for the overall health and safety of the site.
They were fined £768,000 - this was reduced from £1.2 million due to an early guilty plea.
Following Mr Alexander’s death, Farrans put a stop to night-time and weekend security work - instead, they installed hitech electronic security devices.
Farrans Construction is a division of Northstone (NI) Limited.
A spokesperson for Northstone said: “Northstone accepts that on this occasion at Afton Wind Farm we did not meet the high health and safety standards that we seek to achieve to protect our employees, customers, clients, subcontractors and communities.
“We deeply regret that this resulted in the death of Mr Ronald Alexander. Our thoughts and sincerest sympathies remain with his family and friends.
“We took immediate action on the Afton Wind Farm project to prevent a reoccurrence.
“As part of our internal investigation and the subsequent findings we have reviewed and improved our risk control processes across the business.”