ScottishPower employees Innes MacKinnon, 27, and David Dryden, 29, were fatally injured in an explosion at Barrhead primary substation in Renfrewshire on April 15, 1997.
The engineers were working on an 11,000-volt cable fault from a ring main unit located within the grounds of the substation when it exploded. Fitter Jason Reynolds, 29, also received severe burns but thankfully survived the blast and continues to work for the company.
The accident happened when a bar on a testing prod, which the workmen had put into the switch box, sheared off. It tumbled down and touched the power supply, causing the short-circuit which prompted the blast.
A fatal accident inquiry – part of the Scottish judicial process – took place the next year but was unable to fully determine the circumstances leading to the incident.
The inquiry heard that although new safety guidelines had been issued after a prod shearing incident in 1987, at the time of the explosion one in four prods used by ScottishPower had still to be altered. But so much damage had been done in the explosion that it was impossible to determine whether the Barrhead prod had been modified or not.
The David Dryden and Innes MacKinnon Memorial Fund was set up using donations from colleagues. It is a registered charitable trust that provides text books to company employees, or members of their immediate family, engaged in any formal academic study. Each book supplied by the fund has a dedication remembering the engineers attached within the cover and last year just over £1,600 was split between 14 recipients.
However retirements and a reorganisation of the business has seen contributions dwindle in recent years and the trustees are hoping that the approaching anniversary, combined with International Workers' Memorial Day on April 28, will provide an opportunity to raise the profile and stimulate new sources of funding.
Trustee John Kirkwood said: “It is an opportunity to remember our colleagues and their families. Only through strengthening our resolve to reduce risks and protect people from injury in the workplace, will we be ever minded to think about what each of us can do to protect ourselves and our colleagues from ever having to live through another such a terrible time.
“Even to this day I am saddened to recall my memories of the incident. I knew both engineers, especially Innes who had become a personal friend to my family. They are both sadly missed.”
Anyone looking to find out more about the fund, or make a donation, can email John at [email protected]