Quebec roofer’s death highlights how early season heat and inadequate planning can turn deadly
A 38-year-old roofer who died after falling more than five metres from a Boucherville home in May 2025 was working in intense heat without being properly acclimatized and without an active fall-arrest connection, according to a detailed investigation by Quebec’s workplace safety regulator.
Roofer dies after 5.15‑metre fall during residential re‑roofing job
The Commission des normes, de l’équité, de la santé et de la sécurité du travail (CNESST) concludes the worker for Des Roches et Fils inc. was exposed to both uncontrolled fall hazards and significant heat stress as he re-roofed the second storey above a garage on a residential street in Boucherville on May 14, 2025. The roof edge was 5.15 metres above ground and the slope was about 22.6 degrees (5/12).
Shortly after 2 p.m., on the third straight day of exterior roofing work that season, the worker began showing signs of fatigue and confusion while installing insulating materials on the roof. The CNESST notes that he “presented several signs of discomfort, including fatigue and confusion” before the fall. He sat near the ridge to rest, oriented toward the left side of the roof. The employer, who was working with him, suggested he climb down to take a break in the shade and rehydrate, but the worker refused. A few minutes later, he stood up, lost his balance, slid down the left slope and fell the full 5.15 metres to the ground. He died en route to hospital.
The CNESST identified three causes to explain the accident: the worker’s exposure to a 5.15‑metre fall while on the left roof slope; the absence of planning and control of fall-protection measures; and deficient management of work intensity and low heat acclimatization in hot conditions. The regulator found that while the worker was wearing a harness, it was not attached to an anchor via a fall-arrest lanyard. A roof anchor and vertical lifelines were present on site but not used.
The CNESST says the accident “could have been avoided, in particular if the worker’s harness had been connected to an anchoring system by a fall-arrest lanyard,” identifying that missing link as decisive.
Fall‑protection decisions made case by case despite code requirements
Investigators say the employer did not have defined criteria for assessing fall risk by roof type. According to the report, the company administrator “had not defined criteria regarding the analysis of fall‑from‑height risks during roofing work” and instead judged “on a case‑by‑case basis” whether to install an antichute system, even where the regulations required it. On a previous job with a steeper and higher roof earlier that same week, the company had used fall protection; on the Boucherville roof, he “did not see the need to require” the worker to connect his harness to an anchor.
Under Quebec’s Code de sécurité pour les travaux de construction, guardrails cannot be used on work surfaces steeper than 19 degrees (4/12), and where a worker risks falling more than three metres, other measures — including personal fall-arrest systems — must be implemented. For this job, with a 5/12 slope at 5.15 metres above ground, the CNESST writes that “this type of roof slope requires the use of a fall-arrest system” because the angle does not allow guardrails.
Heat and workload played a central role. Meteorological data from the nearby Montréal/St‑Hubert station show air temperatures rising from 18.1 C at 7 a.m. to 27 C by 2 p.m. on the day of the accident, with a humidex‑corrected value of about 30 C at the time of the fall, “the first time that year” conditions had reached those levels. Over the two previous days, temperatures had climbed from the low teens into the high 20s.
An internal CNESST occupational hygiene assessment estimated the worker’s metabolic load for the roofing tasks between 275 and 396 kcal/h — “a level considered moderate to heavy” — and calculated a corrected air temperature (TAC) on the roof ranging from 32.0 C to 45.6 C during the day. The expert report concludes that this combination of workload and environment produced “a level of thermal strain sufficient to require additional breaks because of the heat, even the interruption of tasks in the afternoon.”
The CNESST adds that “it is probable that there was an accumulation of thermal strain” over two days of similar work, “causing heat stroke,” assuming comparable tasks and weather the previous day. Symptoms reported by the employer — lack of appetite, weakness, confusion, malaise and loss of balance — are described as “consistent with the effects of heat and dehydration.”
The investigation determined the worker was not acclimatized under American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists criteria, noting that the company’s exterior roofing season had started only two days earlier. “It is therefore possible to consider that the worker was not acclimatized” to those temperatures, the report states.
Heat, acclimatization and work at height treated as intertwined controls
Immediately after the accident, the CNESST prohibited work at height on the residence roof and ordered that a fall‑protection measure compliant with section 2.9.1 of the construction safety code be implemented. The same day, it allowed work to resume only once it had ensured “that all workers wear a safety harness connected to an anchoring system by a fall‑arrest lanyard,” in line with section 2.9.2(4).
The fatal fall is part of a broader pattern of concern at CNESST over the intersection of heat stress and work at elevation. In a separate May 2025 case, the regulator also linked a worker’s death to “heatstroke and improper planning.”
For health and safety leaders, the case frames early‑season heat, acclimatization and fall protection as interdependent controls: failure in any one of them can turn an otherwise routine roofing job into a fatal event.
