Mid-morning industrial incident sends employees to hospital; brings Fairview Terminal to a stand-still

Work was suspended at Fairview Container Terminal today
following an industrial incident on the site
(photo from Port of PR Website)

Update(December 22) : Port activities  have resumed at Fairview Terminal, after the substance in question from Thursday's incident had been identified as Butyl Acetate, a chemical used for synthetic food flavouring.  The source of the irritant had been discovered after an on site air quality assessment. DP World has indicated that there was no inhalation hazard to the community associated with the incident.


(Original story)

Details remain limited when it comes to an Industrial incident at the Fairview  Container Terminal in the mid-morning period of Thursday, with work suspended at the container terminal and the site evacuated after what appears to have been some form of employee contact with a chemical agent.

Container operator DP World has not provided a great deal of information on the nature of the incident other than that around 9:45 AM two employees were sent to Prince Rupert Regional hospital with respiratory issues and have subsequently been discharged.

After the incident was reported, work was halted and those working the day shift were evacuated from the terminal site. The situation was handed over to DP World's emergency response team, which is working with emergency services to address the situation.

There is no clear timeline as of yet, as to when the Terminal will reopen for service.

No additional information has to this point been released to the public living in the immediate area of the Terminal on the west side of the city. DP World hosts a website and twitter feed, neither of which offers up anything of note for residents at this time.

As well, the Port of Prince Rupert has not as of yet, provided any information related to today's events through any of their communication options.

Today's incident marks the second time in recent months when work has been suspended and  employees have been sent to the hospital,  the September incident resulted in the closure of the terminal for a number of days before work resumed.

That work stoppage, also resulted in a backlog issue for the Terminal to deal with in the weeks that followed, you can review notes from the Terminal as part of our archive page.