The young worker who got stuck on the Grande Roue de Montréal had to manually clear the snow from the drive wheels while rotating; a method of work considered dangerous and improvised, CNESST said in its investigative report.
• Also read: Ex-Owner of the Ferris Wheel: His sextortion victims are demanding $1.6 million from him
• Also read: Worker dies on the Ferris wheel
The 22-year-old who died in a work-related accident on the Montreal Ferris wheel on Christmas Day was named Riley Valcin.
He was clearing snow from the Old Port tourist attraction when the tragedy happened. He had access to a dangerous part of the attraction, which CNESST regrets.
Montreal | INVESTIGATION REPORT: Conclusions on the workplace accident that took the life of an employee of La Grande Roue de Montréal inc. He was pulled in and fatally stuck in the danger zone of the ride. 👉https://t.co/fI6nVI38bk pic.twitter.com/1xDnJX600r
— CNESST (@CNESST) June 9, 2022
“When the snow started to fall, a colleague from another department asked him to manually clear the snow from the spinning drive wheels of the Ferris wheel. To do this, Mr. Valcin, after receiving instructions from this colleague, went to the raised platforms of the locomotives, passing through the left-open gate normally used to delimit the access area of the Ferris wheel. While near the re-entrant angle formed by the lower drive wheel and the large wheel transmission plate, the worker was pulled in and got stuck,” CNESST explains in its report.
Paramedics transported the young man to a hospital center, where he eventually died.
More details to come.