Health and Safety: 1920s-1950s

From the Turner Valley period throughout the Leduc periods, oil rigs were extremely dangerous places. Basic overalls, leather or rubber boots and a wool cap with ear protectors were the only protection most roughnecks had. Injury and death could come from many sources—scalding from faulty steam pumps and valves; getting caught in the rig’s cogs, wheels and pulleys; being struck by snapping belts, chains, ropes or planks and machinery shaken loose from high atop the derrick; falling from the derrick’s cathead or monkey board, just to name a few. A 1938 Calgary Herald article succinctly summed up the dangers of the rigs

Well ‘shooters’ handle nitro-glycerine in quantities sufficient to blow up a

considerable portion of Calgary. Oil well workers on slippery ice-covered derrick floors lower strings of casing weighing many tons into holes h-laden gas [sic] and crude oil high up the derrick for hours at a time. Windstorms send derricks, steel and wooden, crashing into the ground. No wonder, then, that oil drilling is classed as one of the most hazardous occupations in the world. Today no naphtha wells are drilled and Turner Valley is definitely a crude oil field. … Oil well drilling in the Turner Valley crude field, however, still requires courage, care, and efficiency on the part of drilling supervisors, drillers, and the men on the derrick floor.

Newspapers routinely carried stories of severe injuries and deaths on the rigs, but countless less dramatic injuries, such as the loss of fingers and toes, broken and crushed bones, burns and lacerations, went unreported and often unrecorded. Alberta’s oilrigs were extremely dangerous places.

Rig crew safety became an increasingly serious issue following the Leduc discovery. The high attrition rate amongst oil field workers resulted in the loss of skilled and experienced workers, which meant that the oil patch workforce was comprised almost entirely of raw, unskilled workers, whose lack of

experience made them more susceptible to accidents, injuries and death. The Petroleum Industry Training Service (PITS) was founded in 1949 with the mandate to train workers on equipment and the proper use of safety gear. Hard hats, first introduced in 1938, were routinely worn by the 1950s, and safety goggles and fire-retardant clothing became mandatory. Steel-toed boots were recommended, but most workers shunned them as they were colder than regular boots and resulted in frozen toes and frostbite during winter months. Safety belts and netting were redesigned and made from stronger materials.