Two trucks. Two bays. One invisible cloud moving between them.
On one side, a crew was pumping flammable solvents out of a vacuum truck into a storage tanker. On the other side, an idling hydrovac truck was being positioned to offload a wastewater and slurry mixture. Nobody could see the vapours drifting from the solvent transfer toward that running engine. Then the intake pulled them in, and the space between the trucks lit up.
What Happened
On April 30, 2024, workers at 1070 Toy Avenue in Pickering were transferring flammable solvents from a vacuum truck into a storage tanker. This is a soil remediation and waste operation run by GFL Environmental Services Inc., the waste management company headquartered in Vaughan.
While the solvent transfer was underway, other workers moved a hydrovac truck into the adjacent bay to offload its load. That truck was idling. Its engine was running. Its air intake was live.
The solvent transfer released flammable vapours. Those vapours did what vapours do. They spread. They found the running engine's air intake, got drawn in, and met an ignition source. A flash fire broke out between the two trucks.
Four workers were injured.
The Ministry investigation found the company failed to ensure that a process likely to produce flammable vapours capable of forming an explosive mixture with air was carried out in a way that kept those vapours away from ignition sources. The idling truck should never have been running that close to an active solvent transfer.
What the Law Says
The charges came under Section 63(c) of R.R.O. 1990, Reg. 851 (Industrial Establishments), which covers a process likely to produce a gas, vapour, dust or fume capable of forming an explosive mixture with air and requires that it be carried out in an area with no potential sources of ignition, and contrary to Section 25(1)(c) of the Occupational Health and Safety Act, which sets out the employer's duty to ensure that the measures and procedures prescribed by the regulations are carried out in the workplace.
Basically, what this means is simple: if you are running a process that throws off flammable vapours, you have to run it in a space that is free of anything that can set those vapours off. No open flames. No sparks. No running engines pulling air in a few metres away.
GFL Environmental Services Inc. pleaded guilty in the Ontario Court of Justice in Whitby and was convicted on May 13, 2026, for an offence dated April 30, 2024. The company was fined $130,000 by Justice of the Peace Andrea D. Racine, plus a 25% victim fine surcharge on top of that.
Three Things This Case Teaches Ontario Employers
-
Vapours do not stay in their bay. The whole failure here was treating two adjacent bays as two separate zones. They were not. Flammable vapours travel, sink, and pool, and they will find the nearest ignition source. When you plan a solvent transfer, define the hazard zone by where the vapours can reach, not by where the truck is parked.
-
An idling engine is an ignition source. People think about open flames and grinders. They forget that a running diesel engine has a hot exhaust and an air intake that actively sucks in the surrounding atmosphere. Before any flammable transfer starts, every engine within the vapour zone gets shut off. Write it into the permit and enforce it.
-
Sequence your operations so hazards do not overlap. This fire happened because two incompatible jobs ran at the same time in the same air space. Schedule the solvent transfer and the hydrovac offload so they never coincide. If two crews share a yard, one supervisor owns the timing and no truck moves into a live vapour zone.
Walk your yard tomorrow and stand where the solvent gets transferred. Now look at every engine, heater, and power source within thirty metres of that spot and ask which ones would be running during a transfer. Then ask your yard supervisor to describe the exact rule for shutting engines down before flammable work begins. What they say, and what they cannot answer, will tell you whether your next transfer is a controlled job or the setup for the next flash fire.