Following the deaths of three Haines heli-ski guides in as many years, the Alaska Occupational Safety and Health Section is investigating measures the agency can take to improve worker safety.

Mike Buck, a safety consultant with AKOSH, started researching the issue about a year ago, after Southeast Alaska Backcountry Adventures guide Christian Cabanilla died in a cornice collapse in March 2013. A year before Cabanilla’s death, Alaska Heliskiing guide Rob Liberman died in an avalanche along with client Nickolay Dodov.

Three weeks ago, SEABA guide Aaron Karitis was killed in an avalanche.

The deaths – which appear to be among the first for the heli-ski industry in Alaska – have raised questions for AKOSH, which regulates the industry generally but doesn’t have rules or requirements specific to heli-ski guiding.

Conversations with operators throughout the state about their safety protocols and procedures have led Buck to ask “if there is any way to improve those procedures and get things a little more standardized and operators doing the right things by their employees.”

One improvement might be requiring companies to mandate avalanche airbag use for their employees. Airbags, which are worn on the back like a backpack and are deployed with a ripcord, help the user avoid burial by making him a larger object relative to the snow and forcing him to the surface.

Liberman, Cabanilla and Karitis were not wearing airbags. (Liberman’s client Dodov was wearing the device, but had not exposed the device’s ripcord, considered protocol for effective use.)

In talking to heli-ski clients and operators, Buck said he has heard arguments for and against airbags. The advantages are obvious – various studies show elevated survival rates for those who wear airbags – though skeptics claim the bags can add a false sense of security, causing skiers to take unnecessary risks.

There’s also the added six to eight pounds of weight (which some say can lead to dangerous fatigue) and the $1,000 price tag.

“There is a lot of mixed feedback, and I understand that,” Buck said. “From my personal standpoint at this point in my research, I would say yes, they are more of an advantage than not. I personally have one myself,” Buck said.

SEABA co-owner Scott Sundberg said in an interview last week his company started requiring all guides and clients to wear airbags on March 1. “In our opinion, avalanche bags save lives. We were told by employees that they would uphold the standards this season and everyone would wear their bag… Everyone was in agreement that this was a great idea.”

Sundberg said he doesn’t know why Karitis wasn’t wearing an airbag at the time of the March 15 accident. “If you can’t trust your lead guide to tell you one thing and they turn around and do another, then you have to install another safeguard to make sure those safety protocols are happening,” he said.

Next year the company will establish a new “gatekeeper” responsible for making sure all guides and clients have an airbag on before getting on a helicopter, Sundberg said.

SEABA also is in the process of becoming a prospective member of the heliski US Association, a national organization of heli-ski operators whose main purpose is “to set the highest level of operations standards and protocols for its members.”

Its guiding document, the “Heli-skiing Safety and Operating Guidelines,” has been kept secret from non-members for the past 15 years for “competitive advantage” reasons.

After the deaths in Haines and other factors, HSUS president and Cordova-based Points North Heli-Adventures owner/operator Kevin Quinn said “rather than us sitting on these so-called coveted guidelines,” the organization decided in January to make the document public.

“It’s letting the world know there is a standard out there and there is an opportunity for them to join,” Quinn said.

The document outlines requirements for helicopter equipment, pilot experience and training, snow safety management programs, weather forecasting, emergency planning and rescue training and equipment, communications, guide experience training and client education.

The process to become a member of HSUS is rigorous: Once a company has three to five years of operations, it can become a prospective member for a two-year probationary period. During this period, the company is monitored and mentored by other members of the association. At the end of the two years, the company is reviewed for acceptance as a full-fledged member, which involves an extensive audit and review of the operation by two members of HSUS, Quinn said.

Member companies also undergo periodic performance reviews to ensure complete implementation of the guidelines.

“People are putting their lives in our hands,” Quinn said. “It’s a multimillion-dollar industry. We want to regulate that industry and make sure these people are trained and up to snuff,” Quinn said.

Of the 17 heli-ski operators in the state, half have joined HSUS as prospective members, Quinn said.

When HSUS released its safety document, Quinn sent a copy to interim manager Julie Cozzi, Sundberg and Alaska Heliskiing co-owner Sean Brownell. While Sundberg responded and attended the organization’s annual meeting last summer, Quinn said he received “zero response” from Brownell.

When contacted by the CVN last week, however, Brownell said Alaska Heliskiing is applying for a membership to the organization. “I think the only organization capable of setting guidelines for heli-ski operations is the industry itself. HSUS sets guidelines and visits operations to ensure that they are up to par with the industry standards,” he said.

Brownell declined to comment on his company’s current safety policies and procedures.

Quinn, who has been in conversations with AKOSH safety consultant Buck, said he has no doubt change is coming to the industry. “OSHA is big time looking at all of this in terms of employee safety. It’s one of our big tasks that we are dealing with,” he said.

One hang-up is the avalanche airbag requirement, since they use compressed canisters to deploy. Buck said he is in communications with the FAA about their rules regarding compressed air canisters coming on board airplanes and helicopters. Buck also pointed to the impending release of a new airbag by Black Diamond that uses a fan and battery to inflate the airbag instead of compressed air.

“It’s going to be the industry standard once we get past this FAA stuff,” Quinn said of requiring guides to wear avalanche airbags.

Buck said he hopes to have a recommendation about AKOSH heli-ski safety requirements to his superiors within the next six months. The recommendations then have to work their way through the public comment and legislative processes, he said.

In addition to HSUS, the American Mountain Guides Association is also trying to regulate the industry from within. However, while AMGA offers rigorous certification programs for ski, alpine and rock-climbing guides, it doesn’t offer a program specific to heli-skiing.

AMGA accreditation director Ed Cruthers said two Alaska heli-ski companies approached the AMGA board four or five years ago about AMGA developing a heli-ski specific program.

“They were trying to find a way where the heli-ski industry could work closer with the AMGA in terms of training and certifying guides,” Cruthers said. “Our board and the technical committee – if I remember right – we said we weren’t in a place to develop a specific curriculum for that specific group.”

Still, the topic keeps coming up. “The idea keeps getting batted around and it is an idea that AMGA isn’t discarding,” Cruthers said.

Cruthers said he is aware of the heli-ski deaths that have hurt the industry in Haines, but – like Quinn, Sundberg and Brownell – he doesn’t think outside regulation is the answer. “There is something that is breaking down in the system, but it may not be something that requires government regulation.”

Quinn and Sundberg said they value AMGA certification in employees, but neither would consider requiring it. Quinn, who currently has four guides making their way through the program, called it “the college for guides.”

  “It’s a whole other beast,” Quinn said. “The AMGA is a great foundation for a skill set and for growing a guide. However, the AMGA does not promote experience. A lot of guides go through that and have never had a job.”

Sundberg requires his company’s lead guides to have at least five years of mechanized (heli-ski or snowcat) experience and Level III avalanche training in the United States (the highest level) or the Canadian equivalent.

As the industry continued to inch toward standardization since last year’s death of SEABA guide Cabanilla, the death of another SEABA guide this year has probably hastened that shift.

  “The world is watching them,” Quinn said of SEABA. “The industry is watching them. The whole industry is going to be affected by this.”

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