A roof collapse that killed a man working at a vegetable farm in Portage la Prairie, Man., has reignited the debate over standards for agricultural buildings.
On Feb. 9, the roof of a vegetable processing shed at Mayfair Farm caved in, killing Scott Giffin, a 48-year-old Portage farmer. Wet, heavy snow on the roof is believed to be responsible for the collapse, which injured several other workers.
The tragedy follows three hog barn fires in Manitoba last summer that killed an estimated 30,000 pigs.
Unfortunately, this is more than simply a spell of bad luck in Manitoba, said Frank Roberts, a consulting engineer and chair of the safety committee for the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Manitoba.
Read Also
Research looks to control flea beetles with RNAi
A Vancouver agri-tech company wants to give canola growers another weapon in the never-ending battle against flea beetles.
“There have been a series of really horrific collapses and fires … related to large buildings constructed on agricultural land,” said Roberts.
He said the engineers’ association has lobbied the Fire Commissioner’s Office and the government of Manitoba for the last 20 years to include farm buildings in the province’s building code.
“The Buildings and Mobile Homes Act is in place to cover buildings throughout the province, but agricultural land is excluded,” he said.
That exemption was created when farms were small, family operations, Roberts said. But the absence of building regulations doesn’t reflect the modern reality of massive hog barns and processing sheds.
“These are large agri-industrial structures and therefore the complexity of design is much greater than simple farm buildings,” he said.
While the engineers’ association has worked to get this changed, Ron Britton, a professor of design engineering at the University of Manitoba, has been on this issue much longer.
“It’s bothered me forever …. I told all of my students (back in the 1970s) that I thought we should have farm building codes,” said Britton.
Farm building codes are necessary, Britton said, because constructing complex ag buildings is now a specialized skill. The challenge is devising a farm building code that is workable and affordable, he said.
Manitoba premier Gary Doer said the issue is a priority for government and farmers.
“We’re going to try to work with the agricultural community on the tragic situation … but I’ll wait for the investigation of the building in Portage la Prairie and the tragic loss of life,” said Doer, Feb. 12.
On the hog barn fires, Doer said it’s been a difficult period for hog policy in Manitoba, with the moratorium on hog barn expansion and country-of-origin labelling in the U.S.
“It (building codes) is something we have to address, but we have to be sensitive with the economic challenges that people have right now,” Doer said.
Ian Wishart, president of the Keystone Agricultural Producers, said his organization has begun working with the Fire Commissioner’s Office to develop codes suitable for farm buildings.
However, calls from animal rights groups for sprinklers in hog barns is not realistic, he said.
“You’d be lucky if they were still operable three months after you put them up,” he said, because of the high humidity in barns.
Despite the political and technical obstacles, Roberts said the engineers’ association will continue to lobby for farm building codes.
“It’s something we feel is too important to give up on.”
