The explosion and electrical fire that injured three workers at Kubota in Orillia last week is still under investigation.
Sean Driscoll, the public relations officer for the Office of the Fire Marshal, says the occurrence on Commerce Road last Thursday is being investigated by fire investigators and forensic fire protection engineers who completed the scene examination on Saturday.
"Further testing will be conducted and the cause remains undetermined as the investigation remains ongoing," he said.
According to a spokesperson from the Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development, their investigation is also ongoing and there are no further updates at this time.
Coddie LeRoux, a health and safety committee member and union representative for Kubota, says the factory has been shut down almost entirely since the incident occurred.
"We did have roughly 50 percent of the shop open on Friday," he explained. "It ended up getting shut down as well just to make things easier for the investigation."
LeRoux says employees have been told that they are to return to work tomorrow morning. He is unsure if workers will lose hours or pay because of the shutdown.
"That is a common question from the people who work there," he said. "I just don't know until I have those conversations with management."
Despite the "unfortunate" incident, LeRoux says Kubota had been recently taking significant strides to prevent such accidents.
"Probably the most frustrating part about this is that there were some good steps taken and there was still an accident,” he said. "From the unfortunate incidents that we've had in the past, Kubota has started to learn and do some better things to try to prevent these sorts of occurrences."
LeRoux says a lot of incidents and accidents occur through "complacency."
"It should be everybody’s goal every day for all of us to go home the same way we showed up," he said. "Whether it's management, contractors, or the union workers on the floor, we don't want to see anybody get hurt."
