A longtime North Burnaby resident told a Vancouver court Friday that he blasted a "supervisor" at the site of a fatal workplace accident for digging a trench too close to his retaining wall.
Three days later, he said his next door neighbour's retaining wall collapsed into the trench, killing one worker and injuring another.
Thomas Whiffin, who has lived on Edinburgh Street since 1955, was in B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver to testify at the trial of J. Cote and Son Excavating Ltd. and foreman David Green.
J. Cote is on trial for criminal negligence causing death and criminal negligence causing injury.
Green faces the same charges and an additional charge of manslaughter.
Both pleaded not guilty at the beginning to the trial Monday.
The charges are related to an incident in a lane behind Edinburgh Street on Oct. 11, 2021, when a retaining fell into a trench, crushing to death 28-year-old pipe layer Jeff Caron and injuring his co-worker Thomas Richer.
The trench, part of a City of Burnaby storm- and sewer-line replacement project, was being dug in the lane behind Whiffin's house, and he took photos of the work.
As a longtime resident of the area, which slopes down to the Burrard Inlet, he told the court he was concerned about water in the soil.
When Crown prosecutor Emmanuelle Rouleau asked why, he said he remembered a "huge landslide" in the area in the 1990s that had pushed a concrete wall down the slope, over the railroad tracks and into the inlet.
He said he "unloaded" his concerns on a person he described as a "young supervisor" when he saw how close the trench was to his retaining wall and how deep it was.
"I said to him, 'What the f*** do you think you're doing? You can't be that close to our goddamn property. There's too much water in this wall. It's going to come down if you keep doing this shit.'"
He said the man told him the "geotech guys" said they did a survey and it was OK to dig that close to the property.
That was three days before the retaining wall behind his next door neighbour’s house at 4009 Edinburgh collapsed into the trench, according to Whiffin.
Whiffin said he didn't know the young supervisor's name, but it was not J. Cote owner Jamie Cote or foreman David Green, who were both in the courtroom.
Whiffin choked up when he recalled the day of the accident.
Caron and Richer had already been taken to the hospital when he got back to his house in the afternoon, he said.
He said he lowered his Canadian flag to half mast, and Green came over to thank him.
"I said, 'Would you guys take a shot of whiskey to settle the nerves?' and he said, 'No, we better not,' and it wasn't long after that someone got a phone call saying Jeff had passed away."
Whiffin's testimony is expected to continue next week as the trial continues.
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