By Matt Kelly

Digging safety on the menu for Battlefords contractors

Apr 12, 2016 | 1:12 PM

It was an educational breakfast for Battlefords area contracting and construction professionals as they were schooled at a digging safety seminar.

The Saskatchewan Common Ground Alliance held a Contractor Safety Breakfast this morning in North Battleford promoting awareness of safe construction sites, including the Click Before You Dig and Look Up and Live initiatives. Garry Aveyard with SaskTel hosted the breakfast and said safe digging practices, along with knowing what’s below and above a construction site is crucial to moving forward on the site.

“It’s very important to understand where all the utilities are in the ground before you do any kind of excavating or ground disturbance. Then obviously overhead power is big; there’s been quite a few incidences already this year,” Aveyard said.

Even though the breakfast was only open to professionals, Aveyard felt digging safety is something the general public needs to know if they are planning to dig.

“It’s important to know there is stuff in the ground and lot of it. So it’s not that you can just put a shovel in the ground and start digging or using an auger or anything like that. It’s very important to make Sask 1st Call your call and get them out and locate and find out where things are, even in your backyard.”

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Sask 1st Call is a service people can call for underground line information of an area. Aveyard stressed getting lines marked prior to digging can not only save a person a lot of money, but potentially their life.

“There could be tens of thousands of damage, even death. If you hit the gas line, that stuff can explode very easily and it’s happened in this province. So if you hit a gas line and it ignites, your whole house could blow up.”

mkelly@jpbg.ca