Company hired a private industrial dive team while RCMP provides support
Suncor has hired a private industrial dive team to search for the body of a contractor who was killed when the heavy equipment he was operating became submerged in muskeg on January 13 near Fort McMurray, Alberta, at the Fort Hills mine, an open-pit truck-and-shovel oilsands operation.
RCMP Cpl. Matthew Howell said according to the police file, “as of the 16th, the company decided to hire a private industrial dive team” to conduct the search. He said RCMP Search and Rescue suspended its involvement, but “RCMP is still doing grid search and probing with magnetic survey equipment.”
The last update provided to RCMP by Suncor was on January 20th and the body had not been recovered. He noted that in comparable death investigations, police would ordinarily be informed promptly if remains were located, because RCMP are involved in both the investigative process and notifying next of kin.
OHS investigation and unresolved questions about cause
Alberta Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) has opened a formal investigation into the fatality. In a written statement, the regulator said: “It is always tragic when a worker dies on the job…As this is an active OHS investigation, no further information will be provided.”
In a statement to CBC News, Suncor said the incident “may be the result of a medical event.” At this stage, the cause of death has not been formally established, and any conclusion about medical or other contributing factors will depend on the outcome of the OHS and police investigations and, if remains are found, any subsequent medical examination.
Suncor did not respond to a request for comment from Canadian Occupational Safety. In 2022, Suncor’s CEO resigned following a string of fatalities that saw 13 workers lose their lives between 2014 and 2022. Suncor conducted a thorough review of its safety protocols and decided to reduce the use of contractors in its workforce. Rich Kruger took over as CEO in 2023, and the company declared that year was its safest on record.
Lessons for leaders managing high‑energy and soft‑ground risks
The Fort Hills incident underscores how quickly conditions can shift when heavy mobile equipment operates over soft, waterlogged ground such as muskeg, particularly in proximity to open water. Even where surfaces appear trafficable, saturated subsurface layers can fail without warning, creating scenarios that challenge both prevention and rescue.
For organizations with similar operations, the case highlights three areas of focus:
- Ground engineering and authorization: Ensuring that geotechnical assessment, road and pad design, and permit-to-work or dispatch processes fully account for soft ground and water-adjacent tasks, especially for contractors unfamiliar with local conditions.
- Emergency and recovery capability: Pre-planning for submerged-equipment events, including access to industrial dive teams, technical search tools such as sonar or magnetic survey equipment, and clear interfaces with public agencies so roles and expectations are defined before a crisis.
- Incident communication discipline: Aligning early public and internal statements with investigative realities, and distinguishing explicitly between unconfirmed possibilities and established facts to maintain trust with workers, families and regulators.
As the search with the private dive team and the RCMP’s ground-based work continue, and as OHS proceeds with its investigation, health and safety leaders may wish to proactively test their own systems against the questions now in play at Fort Hills: whether the right people had the right information about ground conditions; whether emergency plans realistically anticipated a submerged-equipment scenario; and whether communication protocols are fit for the uncertainty that accompanies complex, ongoing investigations.
