Prairie Mines, which also operates as Westmoreland Coal Company was fined $120,000 for Occupational Health and Safety Violation. 

"The incident that occurred resulted in very significant injuries to a worker and where ever that occurs, occupational health and safety will go in and conduct and investigation and if the investigation determines that there are violations of our act or regulations there will be a recommendation that goes forward for prosecution. That is what happened in this case, as a result of that prosecution Prairie Mines and Royalty was found guilty and was assessed a fine," explained Mike Carr the Deputy Minister of the Labor Relations and Work Place Safety for the Province of Saskatchewan. 

"It's certainly been our experience with Occupational Health and Safety, that employers who have had serious work place incidents resulting in injury have taken immediate and fulsome steps to correct what ever has given rise to the injury or the incident itself. Our expectation would be that that is exactly what employer would be doing in this case. I think the other point to be made here is that this employer has done some very significant work around occupational health and safety to improve within its operations over a number of years. We think that there is likely hood that they will continue to do that and that overall safety within their operations will continue to improve."