LETHBRIDGE, Alberta — A trainman with CP Rail has won a seven-year battle to get benefits from Alberta’s Workers’ Compensation Board for post-traumatic stress after watching two men burn to death in a train-truck collision, the Canadian Press reported.
Barry Ericksen has become increasingly debilitated since 1993 when he saw the horrible accident.
He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder in 1994 but was denied workers’ compensation because the claim fell outside the one-year time limit.
On Oct. 23, the Claims Services Review Committee ordered Ericksen, 48, be paid retroactive and ongoing benefits.
The details have yet to be ironed out but the decision was timely — it came just one day after Ericksen and his wife Cindy received foreclosure notice on their home in the hamlet of Shaughnessy, just north of Lethbridge.