Member Update: Wednesday, Aug. 4, 2004

(EDMONTON – Aug. 4, 2004)
AUPE members may want to think twice about requesting that coveted ground-floor office with a view.

A car driven by an Edmonton man plunged through the window of a Children and Family Services office on Aug. 3, only moments after an AUPE member had left his workstation.

Larry Zawadiuk, a Children and Family Services Supervisor with Local 006/014 in Edmonton, had walked out of his office at about 10 a.m., only minutes before a full-sized Chevy Caprice came crashing through a window located mere inches away from his desk.

“I was just fortunate I was out of the office at the time of accident,” said Zawadiuk. “You step out of your office for a minute-and-a-half and return to see your office completely, well, re-arranged. It’s quite something.”
In his office on the other side of the building, Local 006/014 Chair Guy Quenneville said the crash sounded like a “very large filing cabinet with some sort of glass object on top being knocked over.”

Quenneville said he was “quite shocked” to see a car sitting in his colleague’s office, and a man struggling to get out of the battered vehicle, which had lurched backwards and out of the window again.

“My greatest fear was a client had attempted to harm someone in Children and Family Services,” Quenneville said adding, “Then I saw a man inside the car — obviously in shock — struggling to get out of the car.”

Quenneville helped free the man from his car. The driver told Quenneville that a rubber floor mat had become tangled up with the accelerator pedal, prompting the car to lunge forward from the Belmead Professional Building’s parking lot.

A two-foot thick pillar on the interior of Zawadiuk’s office stopped the vehicle from continuing on across the office, he said.

Dennis Malayko, AUPE Health and Safety Union Representative, said Zawadiuk was fortunate to have left his office when he did.

“After seeing the damage, we all agreed that he is a very lucky man,” said Malayko, “The shards of glass strewn over his desk and about his office were substantial.”

Zawadiuk and colleagues who were nearby at the time of the accident have since been advised of debriefing services offered through the provincial government ’s Employee Assistance Plan.

Malayko said he also notified the provincial government’s OH&S officials and requested they draft a full report, including recommendations, which should be submitted during the Joint Union Government H&S meeting scheduled for Sept. 8.