Danielle Pritchett's son, Cailen Vilness, was one of five men who died in a crane collapse in Kelowna last summer.

(ROB MUNRO / iNFOnews.ca)

“It was torture.”

Those three words describe how Danielle Pritchett felt for much of July 12, 2021 – the day her 24-year-old son, Cailen Vilness, and four other men died when a construction crane collapsed in downtown Kelowna.

First she spent hours, much of it alone, waiting in a reception centre for word of her son, then more hours down at the site of the collapse and in the hospital before finally getting word that Vilness was dead.

“Finally, the RCMP officer, our liaison officer – who was a wonderful woman – came to me and she nodded: ‘He’s gone,’” Pritchett told a gathering of about 100 people in Kelowna’s Ben Lee Park today, April 28, as part of the National Day of Mourning for workers killed and injured on the job.

“I died that day,” she said, fighting back tears. “When I lost my son, I died. A piece of me died that day.”

When asked later if she’s heard anything about the investigation into his death, she said she’s heard nothing, just as she heard nothing throughout much of that long day when Vilness died.

She first heard something was wrong when one of Vilness’ sisters texted her, asking if he was still working on the site, where the Brooklyn highrise tower was under construction.

READ MORE: Mission Group working with families of Kelowna crane collapse victims to design memorial

She was then told a crane had collapsed.

“My heart – it sunk,” Pritchett said. “So, I texted my son. No response. I texted again. No response – which is good because he shouldn’t have his phone on the worksite anyway.”

She decided to drive downtown but was rerouted to a recreation centre to await word.

“There I waited, alone, wondering what the fate was of my son,” Pritchett said.

She waited for hours as construction workers slowly trickled in, none of them, initially, able to tell her what happened to her son.

“At this point I had no idea there were fatalities” Pritchett said. “I had no idea what the collapse looked like. They said: ‘We don’t know how he’s doing but we do know there are a couple who haven’t been found yet.' So we waited and we waited for news of my son.”

RCMP said things were going to take a long time and suggested she go home. Instead she went down to the site.

“Down there I stood, in front of the tower with the wreckage of the crane and I waited and I cried and I waited and I waited and I waited, until 9:30 that night,” Pritchett said.

This is the crane the day after it collapsed.

(ROB MUNRO / iNFOnews.ca)

She was finally told it was no longer a rescue effort but a retrieval. Police asked about his tattoos and were able to, finally, tell her they did find him. They refused to let her go to the hospital in the ambulance with her son.

“At this point, I still believed that he was alive,” Pritchett said. “I still believed that, if he was taking his last breath, I could be beside him.”

She drove to the hospital herself and waited another hour and a half before getting the final word.

Ironically, Vilness was an advocate for workplace safety himself.

“He began to point out if somebody wasn’t tied off properly, or whatever the infractions were that he saw,” Pritchett said. “He began to be ostracized by his coworkers. He was ostracized by his bosses, by the foreman, by the company. He was even demoted on his duties on the job because he was pointing out unsafe work. He would come to me at night and he would cry some days and say: ‘Mom, I don’t know what to do.’”

Pritchett, who has been a workplace safety officer, said she was speaking out in the hopes that others would take safety more seriously and change the workplace culture that treated Vilness that way for speaking up.

“I’m not pointing fingers at anybody but I am opening a Pandora’s box so we can take a real hard look,” she said. “Be safe at work.”

Later, Pritchett refused to say if the workplace infractions Vilness witnessed and reported were at the Kelowna site where he died or other places where he had worked, saying there is still an investigation underway.

Five men died that day. Four were workers on the project and one was a man in a neighbouring building because of his work.

In B.C. last year, there were 161 work-related deaths, including eight in this region, a WorkSafeBC safety officer said at the event.

WorkSafeBC has yet to release any information about their investigation into the crane collapse.

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