Sam and Arlen as Heroes...the Original Version

I wrote a piece for the May 13 Province paper article on Sam Fitzpatrick's death at Kiewit's Toba Inlet job.

This is the un-edited version ...there is a link to the newspaper story at the end...and there are more newspaper articles to come ( hopefully )

I was a drilling and blasting superintendent on the Sea to Sky Highway project from 2006 to 2008, for

Kiewit. I worked the same West Vancouver section as Sam Fitzpatrick, his brother Arlen

and their dad, Brian.

Here are some images of them in action on the Sea to Sky job

Paul Cooper ( Blaster, on the ground )...Arlen and Tim...hanging out...helping Paul to load the shot on Cut 10 of the Sea to Sky job

Arlen on Cut 10 of the Sea to Sky job, helping the blasters load a shot on a steep slope.

Arlen and Sam working with other scalers to hand drill a shot for the blasters at the Sea to Sky Cut 14 area

Sam and Arlen worked on the rock scaling crew, and also helped the blasters.

On a Friday afternoon, February, 2007, a section of rock that we had been working on, looked to be

unstable. There was a risk that a section of rock would come loose and fall down to the highway. It

was decided to post guards over the weekend to monitor the situation, while all the other workers went

home.

On Super Bowl Sunday morning, Arlen and Sam Fitzpatrick were on watch duty, at either end of the

danger zone. They noticed activity on the rock face, and realized that it was getting

ready to fall. With complete disregard for themselves, they jumped from their positions and out to the

highway. Waving their arms and yelling at the top of their lungs, Sam and Arlen put

themselves between the traffic and the avalanche that crashed down behind them. They managed

to stop all the highway traffic just in time. Heroes of the day.

The avalanche covered the highway and closed it until the afternoon.

I have a great memory of Sammy, on the Sea to Sky job. He made us laugh so hard during a

lunch time break that everybody was was breathless and in tears from his non-stop jokes

As a reward for a job well done, I went and got Sam a special safety vest like the ones the engineers

had, and he wore it proudly every day after that.

Tragically, almost exactly two years after the rock slide adventure, Sam Fitzpatrick was killed at Toba

Inlet, only a few feet away from where his brother Arlen stood.

Every person with any kind of connection to that accident and Sammy is still affected by his passing to

this day.

***

The Province paper ran an article on Sam's death at Toba in it's May 13 2012 Sunday edition...it's available online here...

http://t.co/2muHgHeF

The story of the Cut 14 slide aftermath is here
http://adventuresinmikeslife.blogspot.ca/2011/11/superbowl-sundayhelicopters-and.html