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Hi, and welcome to the Safety Guru. Today, I’m very excited to have with me, Jacqueline Quinlivan. She’s a lived experience speaker in the safety space. Happy to have you on the show with me.

Thanks, Eric. Very happy to be here.

Jacci, maybe let’s start with Lindon’s story, because you speak to people all over Australia, around the world, around Lindon’s story, and obviously, some of the ripple effects that come from it. So maybe why don’t we start with Lindon’s story? It’s a very tragic story.

Yeah, sure. I guess, so the May, fourth of May 2018, started off as any other day would. My husband, he got up to go to a typical day shift. He got up quite early, snuck around because we were all still asleep, and gave us a kiss goodbye, and off he went to work. Unbeknownst to us at the time, that would be the last time that he would ever come home, and he would ever be conscious again. After he left, I woke up, I got ready for work. I got the two kids ready for school. Chris, at that time, was 10, and our daughter Mia was eight, so they were still quite young. I got them ready at school, dropped them off, and went to work. When I was at work, it was ramping up, obviously, because it was end of financial year here in Australia. So, working in the finance and accounting field, we were definitely ramping up. And I was working as a self-managed superannuation fund manager. Just after lunch, we’re in a meeting and the phone rang. One of my colleagues got it and interrupted the meeting and I said, Jackie, there’s a call.

And at first, I thought, that’s weird because they’d always take a message. And so, I just said, can you take a message? And they said, No, It’s Mick. You need to take it. So, I knew straight away my gut just dropped. So, Mick was or is my father-in-law, and he was so working at the same company. He was working and associated with that company for a very long time. When I took that call, he just asked me to carefully get to the work site, and he’ll be waiting for me. So, at that stage, I just asked him if Lyndon was okay. And the only thing, and you could obviously hear it in his voice, but he just said, we’ll see. So, I lost it, and I knew that something drastically had gone wrong. Sure. Obviously, one of my colleagues at the time knew that I wasn’t in a state to drive, so she drove me. It was only a 10 drive from my work to the site. When we were ending route, we had to pull over because of all the ambulances, firetrucks, whatnot. So again, poor Trish, she was trying to just say, it’ll all be okay, and trying to make it feel somewhat good.

And then Obviously, all this happened. So, it was just… It was an outer body experience, that’s for sure. When we got to the work site, my father-in-law was waiting for me in the car park. And I just remember him opening the door. And as I got out, he grabbed my arm, and he whisked me upstairs into a boardroom. I don’t even remember my feet touching the ground. Like, he just took me straight up. At that stage, all I knew is there had been some incident potentially involving hydrogen sulfide, H2S, or Rotundones, as it’s very commonly known. Once I got up into that boardroom, we were both just obviously just pacing, waiting for some answer. And somebody came in and asked me for a cup of tea, and I said, no. I said, I just want to know how my husband is. And they just said, the ambulance is trying to work to get his heart started. So again, it was just indescribable. A short while later, they came in again and they said, they’ve got his heart started and he’s in an ambulance going to the local hospital. So immediately, I felt that rush of relief come over me.

His heart started; he’s going be okay. Whatever happens, we deal with it, but he’s not working. So that feeling, again, was indescribable, but I felt relief. Sure. At that stage, my mother-in-law had just come to the site as well. So, we saw her coming through a window. So, my father-in-law grabbed me by the arm, rushed me down, opened the door of her car, put me in and just said, Follow the ambulance, we’re going to the hospital. As we were on route to the hospital, I had to ring my girlfriend at the time and ask about the kids because I didn’t know what was happening. I tried to phone her and there was no answer. So, I phoned her husband, and he answered, and I just basically said, look, I just need you to pick up the kids today and take them home to your place. So, he obviously didn’t know anything at this stage. So, he was probably thinking, what’s going on. But I knew the kids were… They were safe. And then they went to their place. Once we got to the hospital, we went into the emergency department And I said my husband had been brought in, and they were immediately…

They were waiting for us, and we were taken straight away into this very small room. So, at this stage, there was me, my mother-in-law, father-in-law, and my sister-in-law. Again, we didn’t really know what was going on, but we just knew something terrible had happened. About 10, 15 minutes later, I think from memory, someone came in and said to my father-in-law, you have to go out and get checked because he was also at the site this day and he had been exposed to the gas. When he went, I believe there were about a dozen employees as well from the mill, all in emergency. It didn’t take him long once he was all checked over. He came back, had his head down, and he just said, Ben is gone. So, in the incident, there was three people involved. Ben went up first, then my husband, Lyndon, and then another employee, or sorry, another contractor, I believe Tom. Sure. So, he just came in and said, Benny’s gone. And that just obviously changed the dynamics for everything once again. I just thought, wow, this can’t be happening. The doctors came in a few times to see how we were.

Again, we’re in this tiny room. And every time they’d come in, we’d ask, how’s Lyndon? And they’d just say, we don’t know. We’re still working on him. So, we had nothing. From around about 2: 00 till about 6: 00, no information. And at that stage, I had my mother, who lived about 13 hours away. And I just said to her, look, there’s been an incident. Lyndon’s in hospital. Don’t know anything else than that. And I’ll let you know. Once I hung up from her, it all became a blur. They came in at about six o’clock, I think it was. And they just said, the doctor sat down, and he said, look, Lyndon’s very sick. And at that stage, I guess looking back, you could call it a part of the denial stage. I was just sitting there going, okay, he’s sick, but it’s Lyndon. He’ll be right. He’ll be fine.

He’ll be fine.

He’ll be fine. And they’re like, no, he’s really sick. I know. He’ll be fine. It’s Lyndon. Nothing happens to Lyndon. So, I it was a bit of the denial stage, but it was also me trying to stay positive. I don’t know. I don’t really know what- Yeah, sure. They said, we’re just getting him settled and then you’ll be able to see him. So obviously he was in ICU. Just as they left the room, all the sirens, the codes, He went off. That was Lyndon. He was having another cardiac arrest. Again, it was some time before they came in. At around about seven o’clock, I believe we got to see him at night. And all I remember was going in and just seeing, obviously him in ICU with all the apparatus on. Very, very confronting. He wasn’t conscious, obviously. And they just said they were trying everything. I think they were on the phone to different countries, just trying to find out what to do. At about in the very early hours of the next morning, they pulled us aside and They basically had said, it’s only a matter of time before Lyndon arrests again, and we need, obviously, your approval to turn off the life support.

I remember my mother-in-law, she was beside me, and she was nodding her head as if that was her approval. So, I thought that’s what I needed to do. He’d I thought so hard, so long. I never thought that as a 32-year-old with two young kids having to make that decision, I would I don’t ever have to do that, but I obviously found myself doing that. So essentially early hours of the morning, he had lost his fight.

So sorry. 

Thank you. At that stage, again, it was all a blur. By the time we left the hospital, which wasn’t long after, the radio had already gotten hold that he’d passed. So, I remember feeling so blindsided by that. My kids didn’t No, like knew. And now it was just plastered all over the radio. Once we got back to my in-law’s place. They wouldn’t let me go home on my own, obviously. I remember my mother ringing me. She was at Sydney Airport. She was on her way down to see us. I remember my mom ringing me to see how Lyndon was. And obviously, I had to break the news to her then that he’d passed. And I think she thought I was joking. It was just…

Sure.

Mom then had to board the flight from Sydney to Aubrey while she was trying to process what she just heard. By about nine o’clock the next morning on the 25th of May, I had my girlfriend bring over my children. I said to her, you can’t take them to school.

Just throw it over.

And around about the same time, my mother turned up, my kids turned up. So, we were all together. And then, obviously, I had to break that news to my young children that their father wasn’t coming home and why he wasn’t coming home, which as a parent, that’s not something you could ever imagine having to do. I will never forget that experience. Basically, after that, the pieces of the story started coming together. So, my husband, also Ben, had gone up onto a tank. It was a scheduled three day shut at the work site, which I read. But everyone probably knows what a shut is in terms of mill operations, its maintenance, cleaning, all that That stuff for certain things. At this particular shot, the tank in question wasn’t being touched. The only reason something came up was because someone saw a crack in the tank, I believe, and then liquid running down the tank. So, Ben was sent up to investigate. As he got up, he was very, very soon after rendered unconscious. And then another colleague, Davin, who was extremely good friends with Lyndon and Ben, he had gone up, started, excuse me, started Excuse me.

Started to feel light-headed and then came down. He didn’t actually think anything of it because that was his first shift back from kidney surgery.

Right. So, he assumed it was a different reason, right?

Yeah. So, as he came back down, he radioed to Lyndon. So, Lyndon and Tom, I believe, were in the control room. And Lyndon was actually a trained first responder. Sure. Didn’t obviously help in this particular incident. But him He went up first, and then Tom followed him behind. Lyndon was rendered unconscious, and then Tom followed as well. At this stage, there was a lot of scrambling going around, trying to get bands up there to disperse, ventilation, all that thing. And Lyndon’s father had to be held back because he wanted to obviously go up.

Of course. Yeah.

To save his son, so they were holding him back. And then that’s when they worked out it was hydrogen sulfide. So, yeah, that’s basically the story of that. And then obviously the investigation had to start.

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In a case like this, there’s a lot, if we think back from a leadership standpoint, there’s a lot that can come up in terms of even understanding the risks that are present. What surprises me in the story is Hydrogen’s H2S is very dangerous as a chemical. Then my hope is it would be adequate training, there’d be adequate preparation. But it sounds multiple people went up, not necessarily fully realizing the risk in front of them. The other piece is if you have chemicals like this, normally you’d have detectors monitoring equipment. So that you have an early warning that something’s wrong before you actually go in, as opposed to observing a crack and something, a liquid falling or not dropping.

I think you’re exactly right in that once the investigation was completed, they obviously, as a company, they had multiple failings. We’re not talking about just two or three. We’re talking about- Sure. Multiple. One of those failings was the absence of the monitors. Another failing was where they actually went up was later deemed a confined space, but it wasn’t at the time.  

Right.

Yes, because apparently, I believe that their confined spaces were tanks, But, this area was above a tank. You had a ladder up on the side of the tank, and then up on the tank, I don’t believe they could stand fully, and then you had a concrete floor and equipment above that.

So insufficient ventilation.

No, it wasn’t sufficient ventilation. And that was obviously one of the things as well, which they didn’t have the ventilation there. So again, you look at that and see all of these filings. If they had those things in place, if they had had had the gas monitors, gas detectors, no one would have been up there or even training around the risks associated with a leak of… Because the first thing I remember you saying was, they spotted a crack but if you know that crack is on a tank that has a sizable risk associated with it, then you think there’d be a different process to follow.

Well, that’s exactly right. And not to mention as well that hydrogen sulfide is a byproduct of so many things, including pulp and paper manufacturing. So, it’s a known risk. They weren’t, I believe, they weren’t aware of those risks in this particular tank. They were aware that it could form in other areas of the mill. Sorry, of the company. But I don’t believe they actually knew that it could form where it did.

I think this is the part of my assumption is there were no prior events. I think there’s a It’s a misconception that safety is an absence of events, but safety is really the presence of safety, of controls, and proactively looking at what could go wrong. This is the type of thing where you may have no event around it, but it doesn’t mean until something happens that there wasn’t a risk.

Yes, exactly.

Now, is there anything else? There are quite a few things that were missed. Is there anything else from a leadership standpoint that we can take away? Because obviously for the audience, a lot of it is, how do I influence safety? One of the pieces that comes to me is really this element of how I proactively look out for risks that I may not be aware because nothing’s happened necessarily there. How do I build in that competency within my business? Anything else that came up from the investigation that you can share?

Look, obviously, the consequences of H2S where It wasn’t made clear. So, the training was inadequate. Sure. So, most workers were unaware of the fatal effects of the rotten egg gas on human life. And I believe in the incidents where H2 West is present or even has the potential to be present, it needs to be made there. The confined spaces. Everyone needs to have a look at their confined space and deem appropriate the confined space. The lack of risk assessments or conducting risk assessments in the plant, that was a huge failing. And also, another one was when somebody went to raise the alarm that an incident had happened, it was found that a siren wasn’t working. So, again, all of these things, if they were in place, and its maintenance, its training, it’s the crack in the tank had been there since about 2015, I believe. Why was it not maintained?

Oh, wow. So, it was just notice on that day, but it didn’t happen just then.

No, the crack in the tank had apparently been there. As I’ve heard, yes, had been there since 2015. So, it was an incident waiting to happen, and unfortunately, it was on this day that it happened. Yeah, I just… If they have all of their training and safety requirements in place, it wouldn’t have happened. Part of the investigation found that, obviously, they didn’t have the monitors, so they had to put those there. Sure. And then a second incident happened shortly after, where the levels of H2S, again, were extremely high. But thankfully, the monitors picked it up, so nobody was hurt. But again, it was still the presence was still there. If they had have had that simple gas monitor, whether it be an attached fitting or even a personal monitor, they wouldn’t have gone into that environment.

Ideally, both. They have redundancy. I think the redundancy is ideally where you’re trying to move to something on the person if you know there’s a presence and then something in the environment. So, you have a backup because the monitor could also fail.

Yeah, correct. Yes. And then they also had, we’re talking about extremely high levels of H2S, not just your regular. It can cause a little bit of confusion with your smell and everything else in a four-hour window at however many PPMs. We’re talking about upwards of 700 PPM into the thousands, I believe.

Oh, wow. When you speak to audiences around Lindam’s story, what are some of the messages that you help as well convey?

I suppose for me, it is about the real-life ramifications of a tragedy and a workplace incident, whether it be a fatality or a serious injury. To prioritize safety, to ensure that those workers can go home to their loved ones at the end of a shift and ensure that they feel safe in their working environment, that’s basically what I do. So, if you go to work as a worker, you have a right to come home. Absolutely. You have a right to a safety or a safe and healthy workplace.

Absolutely. 

I give the real-life consequences of what happens if you don’t take safety seriously.

And the ripple effects as well in terms of the people that are left behind, right?

Absolutely. Yes. And those ripple effects are gigantic. Not only on those particular days. So, Ben obviously passed on the 24th of May, Linda passed on the 25th of May. Tom had made a full recovery. But the other thing is the workers, they were a family at that work site because they work together so often. They work 12 hours shift. One particular employee took his life two weeks later as a result of feeling guilty. And let me tell you, it wasn’t his fault. It was all of those failings leading up to an event like that. So, we have We have three lives here that have been lost and one life that has been changed forever by an injury of that size. But all of the repercussions on the employees, the families, and the wider community, it’s huge. Absolutely.

Is there any message as well that you convey as part of those conversations, particularly around frontline team members and their role around safety as well?

Look, I think it’s not only the frontline team members. All of them, they have an obligation to make sure that their people are safe and every Everyone has an obligation. Even the employees have an obligation. I suppose for me, in our incident, Lyndon and Ben weren’t aware of what he was about to transpire.

No, it doesn’t sound like it.

Lyndon was one of the most safety-conscious people I know. He took safety so seriously. If he knew that he would have actually put on the appropriate PPE or anything like that.

But- He was the first responder. He was trying to go and help somebody. So, he’s trying to do the right thing.

Yeah. So really, again, for the frontline people, it’s the training and the risk assessments that need to be conducted for the employees. If something doesn’t work properly, be it a PowerPoint, well, report that and get it fixed because that PowerPoint may, in the future, be something that could save someone’s life, like sticking a fan.

But you also have to create the environment for that to occur. I agree with you. Absolutely. We’ve got to speak up, stop work, bring those pieces. But there’s also a leadership responsibility in terms of how I create and foster an environment where people feel safe to do that because it’s not straightforward to stop work to challenge. Also to talk about risk, to introduce those regular conversations. To me, that’s a very key part of leading for safety.

Correct. Yes. I believe you have to be aware of your risk. As a leader, you are You’re basically the guide for everybody else. Everyone’s looking to you for that experience. So, you need to prove that you’re able to do that job. As a leader, talk to your people, your employees, your team about the safety. Have you seen safety risks, or have you seen something that you may think it’s unsafe? Give them the opportunity to speak up without the fear of consequences.

A hundred percent, right. And to be looking up for things. So, if this tank had a problem for years, or at least for a period of time, you want to make sure that people raise those issues, that you’re surfacing them so that you become aware of those risks so you can then drive the proactive maintenance. So, all of these pieces require a high level of engagement across the plant.

Absolutely, yes.

Jacqueline, I really appreciate you sharing Lindon’s story. I appreciate that you’re continuing to invest in trying to make a difference in the safety space through the sharing of his tragic event. I’m very sorry for your loss. If somebody wants to get in touch with you, what’s the best way for them to do that?

They can go to my website, which is Jacquelinequinlivan.com.au. They can also find me on LinkedIn, Jacqueline or Jacci, J-A-C-C-I, Quinlivan.

Excellent. Thank you so much for joining me today on the show.

Thank you so much, Eric. I really enjoyed it.

Thank you for listening to The Safety Guru on C-suite Radio. Leave a legacy. Distinguish yourself from the past. Grow your success. Capture the hearts and minds of your teams. Elevate your safety. Like every successful athlete, top leaders continuously invest in their safety leadership with an expert coach to boost safety performance. Begin your journey at execsafetycoach.com. Come back in two weeks for the next episode with your host, Eric Michrowski. This podcast is powered by Propulo Consulting.