Edmonton Spring 2023

Excavators Reminded reminded One Call one May call Not may Be not
Enough be enough
Rocky Pooke launched 2nd CALL® in 2009, a company that checks for
locatable underground lines and marks them out at excavation sites to
help ensure locatable live and abandoned underground facilities and
hazards are identified. 2nd CALL ® also standardly double checks locatable
underground lines marked by utility owners that are notified when
you make a first call or click.
For years people have been told to call before they dig, but what many
don’t realize is there should be at least two calls made before breaking
ground.
Most are familiar with making a first call or click, which are notification
services that allows people to make a phone call and have registered
utility lines in the ground marked by the utility agencies who own them,
like Fortis, ATCO or Telus.
The problem is, there are a lot of things in the ground that typically
won’t be checked by only making one call, such as Shaw Cable fibre,
Alberta Transportation lines and any other underground lines that are
not registered because these underground lines and hazards are not
registered with all notification services.
That’s where Rocky Pooke and his Alberta wide company come in. He
founded 2nd CALL® - The Next Generation Locating Service because
one call or click is not enough to check for both registered and unregistered
underground lines and hazards as required by Alberta Occupational
Health and Safety.
“Through the 80s and shortly thereafter most, but not all, basic utilities
became registered with a provincial notification center,” said Pooke.
“The problem is, the world has changed and there’s a lot more stuff in
the ground now that isn’t registered anywhere. And it isn’t law that it has
to be.”
As a trained fireman, master electrician and safety codes officer, safety is
of utmost concern for the owner of 2nd CALL.
While notification centers use maps of reported registered lines and
contacts those owner companies when needed to go out and mark their
underground lines. Pooke said it’s not always 100 per cent.
“Even though a company may be part of a notification center there’s no
guarantee they’ve reported all their utilities to the center,” he said. “The
other issue is just because everything is reported it doesn’t necessarily
get marked, because there’s no other check. If something is not on a
map it typically is not checked for.”
His company got its start after a disturbing incident in 2008. An excavator
in the Vegreville area had struck a miss-marked underground facility,
and a local utility company was allegedly found guilty of negligence for
improperly mapping the line – which wasn’t its own. It had been doing a
favour, something commonly done back then, said Pooke.
With several trenching and commercial jobs on the go, Pooke decided
he couldn’t put his employees in danger and began looking for companies
that would look for everything, if making one call wouldn’t be. All
he could find was companies who did locates for notification centers,
but nobody who went out on their own and scanned randomly for evown,
and 2nd CALL was born.
His biggest concern was with mismarked lines and abandoned lines and
unregistered lines which wouldn’t typically be reported by a provincial
notification center response.
“Abandoned lines are all over Alberta and once utilities abandon line
they typically come off the maps,” said Pooke. “Is it possible an abandoned
line has enough product in it to hurt or kill you still? Absolutely.
“So there’s still lines out there that could have gas in them, or at least
enough gas for a flashover, and there are power lines that are still energized,
and we know because we find them and we know they’re down
there.”
His company typically goes out with both a transmitter and receiver
and two people, who walk the area in a grid formation and flag anything
their equipment picks up, rather than relying on what comes up on a
map and only tracing it. They’re looking for anything locatable that gives
off a signal, he said.
“If it’s possible to distinguish what it is – power, water, sewer, gas – it is
marked accordingly, and if something is picked up but unidenti-fied, it’s
marked with a neutral colour so excavators know there is an unknown
hazard underground,” he said.
“Making a first call or click is a great first step,” said Pooke. “But you
need at least another call or click.
“If you do a single call or click it checks about half the stuff that’s down
there. If you do 2nd CALL it double-checks the first stuff and checks for
the rest of the locatable lines.”
His interest was piqued after a ruptured gas line northwest of Turner
Valley resulted in a fatality.
He said he spoke with Turner Valley RCMP and the fire department to
find out whether locates had been done, but it’s unclear what had been
marked.
“My big thing when I was checking it out was – was this preventable?”
said Pooke. “People still largely aren’t aware, and they don’t know that
two calls should be made – at least.
“We’re way past the need for two calls or clicks. This should have been
happening 10 to 20 years ago, so we’re behind the eight ball but thankfully
we’re here now, it’s just to get the awareness out to everybody and
educate them on why they should be doing it.”
A letter was sent to contractors notifying them of the practice, and
stating utilities owners would no longer be marking lines for other
agencies – in other words, information on some other lines lurking
underground would not be provided if the company that had installed
it wasn’t responding to a notification or they were simply unregistered
underground lines.
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