MARK Smith wanted to be a policeman, but his father advised against the idea, fearing the job was too hazardous.
Sadly, it was a seemingly mundane job of making plastic water tanks that was to rob the 27-year-old and 34-year-old workmate Warren Law of their young lives at a Bomen factory.
“Mark wanted to join the police force but I was not happy about that because it was a dangerous job,” Mr Smith’s father Ron said yesterday.
“Who would have known something like this would happen?”
In the NSW Industrial Court yesterday, Mr Smith’s and Mr Law’s employer, Viscount Rotational Mouldings, was fined $162,500 after earlier pleading guilty to failing to ensure the health, safety and welfare at work of all its employees, particularly Mr Smith and Mr Law.
Mr Smith, a moulding specialist, and Mr Law, a team leader, died on November 4, 2005, when part of a water tank exploded out of a mould and hit their upper bodies.
They died at the scene.
According to the court judgment, Mr Law and Mr Smith were using an air hose to inject cool air into the mould to release the tank, which had become stuck.
“In the course of doing so, the plastic tank, under extreme pressure, expanded and ruptured,” Judge Staunton said in her judgment.
“It resulted in the ejection of the tank at a high velocity.
“A portion of it struck Mr Law and Mr Smith and fatally injured both of them.”
Judge Staunton said the procedure of using compressed air to assist in freeing plastic moulds was not known to or endorsed by Viscount’s senior management but was taught by the production supervisor Ikuna Mafi, who had learned it at a previous job and taught it to some other Viscount employees at Bomen.
“It was not documented or risk assessed and, as events proved to Mr Law and Mr Smith, was inherently dangerous,” Judge Staunton said.
She said the practice was not only undocumented, but, at best, was an ad hoc system adopted on a hand-me-down basis.
“While it is said the defendant’s senior management did not know of, or endorse this method of freeing the plastic mould, it is difficult to comprehend how this unauthorised procedure, utilised openly in the workplace on many occasions prior to November 4, 2005, was able to escape management scrutiny and remedial action,” she said.
“It is, on any view, a significant blemish in an otherwise commendable commitment on the part of the defendant to workplace safety.”
TRADGEDY: Mark Smith (inset) and Warren Law died in a November 2005 accident at the Tankmasta factory in Bomen when a plastic water tank stuck in a mould ruptured, hitting and fatally injuring the men. Factory owner Viscount Rotational Mouldings admitted failing to ensure the health, safety and welfare at work of all its employees and was fined $162,500.
Email a friend