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Paramedics load an injured person into an ambulance at the Wainwright Health Centre as injured military members are treated after a fire at CFB Wainwright on Saturday.John Ulan/The Canadian Press
The army is expected to investigate the fire at the Canadian Forces base in Wainwright, Alberta, in which four soldiers were killed and 39 people injured, through a process known as a board of inquiry, which can compel evidence and is designed to make recommendations to prevent similar incidents.
Boards of inquiry are used to investigate everything from misconduct involving Canadian Forces personnel to suicides and fatal incidents such as the one in Alberta. But they have come under criticism for a lack of transparency, particularly because neither the board’s hearings nor the final report and recommendations are automatically made public.
CFB Wainwright blaze that killed four, injured dozens began as grass fire
University of Ottawa law professor Ret. Colonel-Maître Michel W. Drapeau said it’s “absolutely essential” that the Forces and the federal government allow public and media access to the board of inquiry into the Wainwright fire.
“Those members’ fatalities and those who are injured are our sons and daughters, and husbands and wives, so we the public have an interest to find out what happened and hopefully to find out also what measures may be taken to prevent recurrence,” Mr. Drapeau said.
“Four deaths is significant and there may be more. I think the public has a right to know.”
Mr. Drapeau said he’s represented families and military members at boards of inquiry, witnessing their frustration at having to wait five or six years to see the report and recommendations, which in many cases are abridged or redacted.
The Department of National Defence said a fire fanned by high winds moved quickly into a training area at CFB Wainwright around 4 p.m. on Saturday.
A fire marshal team will determine the cause of the fire, while the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service, an independent investigative unit of the military police, and RCMP working alongside local military police, are also investigating what happened, said Major-General Wade Rutland, Commander of 1st Canadian Division.
Maj.-Gen. Rutland declined to say whether the report’s findings would eventually be made public. He also cautioned that the process would not be quick.
“With this amount of casualties and complexities, it’s not going to take a day or a week,” Maj.-Gen. Rutland said, referring to when board of inquiry would convene.
In town linked closely to base, shocked residents of Wainwright react to grim news
A board of inquiry, usually made up of three members, can depose witnesses to testify under oath. It’s purely investigative and designed to make recommendations, not find fault, said Ret. Master Seaman Gordon Scott Campbell, a military lawyer.
Mr. Scott said he expects the Canadian government to make the board of inquiry report public, as it eventually did for the 2004 submarine fire aboard HMCS Chicoutimi, which killed one man and injured nine others, though it took intense political pressure and calls for transparency.
“Ultimately, Parliament became involved. Here, as I’ve heard there have been multiple deaths, I would anticipate probably it will be made public in the end,” he said.
The circumstances of a tragedy at CFB Valcartier in 1974 that killed six teenaged reservists were almost never made public. Ultimately, a Quebec coroner held a full inquiry which found criminal liability, Mr. Scott said.
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Gerry Fostaty witnessed a deadly explosion at CFB Valcartier in 1974 and later wrote a book about the incident.Galit Rodan/The Globe and Mail
Former Canadian Armed Forces reservist Gerry Fostaty was an 18-year-old reservist at CFB Valcartier when he witnessed a horrific explosion that injured nearly 100 teenagers – killing six of them. And for decades, he said, he was told to never discuss what he saw.
“It was a passive cover up for sure – they told us not to speak about it, and then they ignored it,”Mr. Fostaty said. But many years later he ignored orders and published As You Were: The Tragedy at Valcartier.
The 2011 book is an eyewitness account of how CAF officials were teaching military tactics by passing around a box of inert “dummy” munitions to a group of 14 and 15 year old cadets jammed into a barrack.
But a live grenade was inadvertently in the mix – and it exploded.
“These guys are sitting shoulder to shoulder on the floor, you know, cross-legged,” Mr Fostaty said in an interview on Sunday. He said he saw horrific deaths and injuries that altered people’s lives forever on that day.
What we know so far about the fire at CFB Wainwright
In 1968, seven CAF paratroopers were killed when they drowned in the Ottawa River. The paratroopers jumped off of a transport aircraft expecting to land on the base near Ottawa. Instead, unexpected gusts of wind carried 22 of them into the nearby river, where they were tangled up and weighted down by their chutes. Rescuers saved most of the men, but seven drowned.
In 1988, military officers training on explosives were blowing a five-metre-deep hole at CFB Chilliwack, near Vancouver. Six of them died when the bomb detonated unexpectedly.
The next year, in 1989, a Canadian C-130 transport aircraft with 18 people abroad crashed in Alaska en route to a Canada-U.S. military training exercise. Seven soldiers were killed on impact and two later died in hospital. The nine-death tragedy occurred as the Hercules crashed just short of the runway at U.S. base at Fort Wainwright, which is near Fairbanks.