Excavation work 'went against all codes'

Work done at an excavation site which contributed to the deaths of ten people in a block of flats "went against all the codes", a former employee has told the Royal Court.

Workers from Island Energy had been disconnecting a redundant gas supply to Haut du Mont on 9 December 2022 when they accidentally cut off supplies to other commercial properties at La Collette.

Gas supplies were later reinstated at about 19:15 GMT to some of the buildings, including the St Helier Yacht Club, and to the block of flats at Haut du Mont, which exploded shortly before 04:00 the next morning.

Gas workers Neil Armstrong, 58, John Wright, 60, and Lee Ward, 59, deny 10 counts of gross negligence manslaughter.

Island Energy, represented by chief executive Graeme Millar, has also pleaded not guilty in a combined health and safety case.

Mark Wheeldon, a former asset delivery manager at Island Energy, said he had been aware the gas supply had been lost on the Friday afternoon because his office at Island Energy, one of the commercial buildings affected, had become cold.

When he left work that evening, Wheeldon said he had offered his assistance but was told by Armstrong everything was "in hand".

The court heard Wheeldon said he did not know work was taking place to reconnect supplies that evening and said he would have expected work to have begun the following week rather than that evening.

He said he believed it should have taken teams three days as opposed to a couple of hours.

"It was a fairly big job, it isn't something I'd want to do overnight and, as far as I was concerned, it wasn't urgent," he said.

Wheeldon said he would not have initiated work until the next working week because it was "one of those incidents you need to think about and know why it went wrong".

The jury was told when Wheeldon found out about the explosion early the next morning he said he had spoken to the duty manager on call, James Johnstone, who "sounded absolutely distraught".

Wheeldon told the court shortly after the phone call he went into the office at 07:40 and set up an incident room to create a timeline of events, including escape logs which would have shown what had been done on the site, and to "keep evidence safe".

He then said he went down to the excavation site at Commercial Buildings, the road below Haut du Mont.

"What struck me was how small it [the excavation] was," he told the court.

Wheeldon said he "wasn't 100% [happy] with what had been done" at the excavation site "because it went against all the codes".

He had then ordered those at the site to cut off the supply to Haut du Mont because "at that point I wanted it to be as safe as it possibly could be" for those working at the block of flats - including emergency services.

Wheeldon said a continuing issue for Island Energy before and after the explosion had been staffing and he told the court he had never had a full team of workers when he was in his role with the firm.

The trial continues.

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