Ontario’s Ministry of Labour says it is investigating after a worker who became “trapped under material” died at a steel processing plant in Hamilton last week.
In an email, Hamilton Police Service spokesperson Krista-Lee Ernst told CBC Hamilton officers responded to a 911 call shortly after 10 a.m. on July 16 at 425 Arvin Ave., in Stoney Creek.
Police said a 54-year-old Hamilton man was taken to hospital and was pronounced dead.
The address is a Taylor Steel facility, according to its website, and the Ministry of Labour confirmed the man worked for the company.
Manuel Alas-Sevillano, a spokesperson for the ministry, said the man was “trapped under material.”
Taylor Steel’s website says its Number 7 plant at that location has over 300,000 square feet of climate-controlled storage space designed to house “value added, critical end use material.”
An inspector from the ministry has been assigned to look into the man’s death, it said.
In a statement to CBC Hamilton, Paul Krikke, vice president of people and technology at Taylor Steel, said in an emailed statement the company is “saddened and alarmed” by the incident, and said the man was a “highly valued employee” of the company.
Krikke added that out of respect for the family and due to the ongoing investigation, the company is not releasing further information at this time.
There have been previous deaths at the Taylor Steel plant over the last few years.
In 2020, paramedics found a 33-year-old worker dead after receiving calls about an industrial rescue.
In 2013, a man was performing maintenance work on a crane when he suffered a “work-related electrocution” and died.
Alas-Sevillano said the Ministry of Labour’s investigation in both past instances had been completed. He added that the 2020 death was found to be a non-work-related fatality and that the person who died in 2013 was employed by COH Installation and Services Inc.