Gold Mine Accidents

[bigjarofwasps]

Gold mine accident crushes 100 - Cape Town, South Africa

12th May 1995

CAPE TOWN, South Africa - Thirty hours after a 12-ton underground locomotive and an elevator cage filled with miners crashed to the bottom of the Vaal Reefs No. 2 shaft at Orkney in the Orange Free State, recovery teams brought up the first few bodies of what may be possibly more than 100 dead.

Working in shifts in Stygian darkness 7,500 feet below the surface, the teams were still attempting to disentangle the mass of twisted metal and piles of concrete shaft lining and rock at the base of the shaft.

The only confirmation reaching the surface was that there were no survivors.

How the locomotive - used on the 56 level, 1,700 meters down - plunged into the shaft is not known. It appears to have tipped into the shaft as the cage containing night-shift miners was on its way up from the lower levels. The locomotive crashed into the elevator cage 500 meters from the bottom of the shaft, snapping the cable and sending the cage plummeting down.

Energy and Mineral Affairs Minister Pik Botha said it appeared that human error caused the accident because the locomotive went through a safety barrier -and fell into the shaft.

"The locomotive could not have moved as it did had it been properly controlled," Botha said in a statement. "The driver is alive so he must have either jumped out of the locomotive or in any event was not in it."

Some 400 other workers were brought safely to the surface, and rescuers were using a parallel shaft to reach the wreckage, mine officials said.

After recovery teams brought up the first four mangled bodies, medic Garth Ellis, who was part of the first rescue squads, said, "It's a heap of mangled steel. It's a gruesome sight."

"Pieces of flesh were scattered all over ... a two-floor mining carriage was crushed into a one-floor tin box," said James Motlasti, president of the National Union of Mineworkers.

The union has been invited to take part in a probe of the accident.

Damage to the shaft, one of 10 at the mine. is still to be assessed. The No. 2 shaft produced 7,687 kilograms of gold last year, 12 percent of the output of Vaal Reefs Exploration & Mining Co. Ltd. The mine is located 112 miles southwest of Johannesburg.

The disaster was the second tragedy to strike the mine in recent weeks. Last month, an inter-communal clash between Xhosa-speaking and Sotho-speaking miners left 12 dead and 56 injured.

Labor leaders called for an independent investigation and review of safety standards.

Sam Shilowa, head of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, told a Johannesburg radio station that South African mines had the highest number of deaths in the world.

South Africa is the world's leading gold producer and has some of the deepest mines. Accidents occur frequently.

Botha said he would support a union call for an independent probe. "We cannot, in a tragedy of this nature, quibble about procedural matters," said Botha, whose ministry will carry out an investigation.

The nation's worst mining disaster occurred in 1960, when 437 workers were killed when trapped in a coal mine south of Johannesburg. The worst gold mining disaster occurred in 1909, when 152 miners died in a flooded mine.

A report on mine safety by a government-appointed panel was expected next week. This accident was likely to spur calls for stronger safety measures.

[bigjarofwasps]

17 Die in Blast in South African Gold Mine

30 July 1999

At least 17 miners were killed late Thursday in an explosion in a gold mine near Johannesburg, the mine owners reported.

Two workers are still missing in the mine, the Mponeng, near Carletonville, about nine miles southwest of Johannesburg. Twenty miners were rescued.

This is the worst mining disaster for the mine's owner, the Anglogold group, since 1995, when 104 people were killed when an elevator plummeted in a mine near Klerksdorp. Anglogold, the world's biggest gold producer, said the explosion was apparently caused by methane.

South Africa's mines are among the world's deepest and accidents are frequent. The authorities said at a mine safety meeting in November that nearly 890 miners were killed in South Africa's mines in the last two years.

[bigjarofwasps]

Twelve die in South African gold mine disaster

10 May 2001

Twelve mineworkers were killed in an explosion at the Beatrix gold mine on Tuesday May 8, in South Africa's worst mining disaster in two years.

The explosion at the mine near Welkom, 280km southwest of Johannesburg, occurred about 850 metres underground and tore apart a development area where the men were working. Two more miners suffered serious burns, one of whom is in a critical condition in a local hospital. Six others escaped unharmed. Four thousand men were working in the mine at the time of the explosion and all have been accounted for. As news of the disaster spread, hundreds of anxious relatives telephoned the mine to find out whether their loved ones were safe.

The immediate cause of the disaster is thought to have been a methane gas explosion. A broken fan had been reported the night before, which would have reduced air circulation and increased the danger of a gas build up. Four senior members of staff—two electricians, a vent officer and a production supervisor, who had been sent down the mine to investigate the breakage, were among the dead. The other eight fatalities were construction workers repairing tracks. The disaster comes 51 weeks after a similar explosion killed seven at the same mine on May 15 last year.

In a statement, Gold Fields Free State divisional manager Dana Roets claimed that the lessons of last year's disaster had been learnt and the four senior members of staff were equipped with devices used to measure the presence of methane gas. He said that the deadly gas is "lighter than air and so in a haulage area methane can be quite high overhead and difficult to detect". He added that the lack of circulation caused by the broken fan could increase the danger of a methane build up.

The government has announced that there will be an investigation into the explosion. One question that must be addressed is why work at the mine had not been stopped, at least in the vicinity of the broken fan, when the danger of a build up of methane was known. With 4,000 miners underground at the time, the disaster could have been far greater.

South Africa's deep-level gold mines are among the most dangerous work environments in the world. The death toll this century is reported as anything from 69,000 to 100,000, with more than one million workers injured in South African gold mines.

The gold is reached by blasting, which destabilizes the overhead roofs and creates a constant danger of rock falls. Methane gas explosions and fire are also serious hazards, causing many deaths.

In the industry's last major accident in July 1999, a methane gas explosion at a mine in the gold belt southwest of Johannesburg killed 19 miners. The country's worst mining disaster was in 1986, when 177 workers were killed as a result of a polyurethane fire at a mine east of Johannesburg. A total of 313 miners were killed in 1999, 372 in 1998 and 424 in 1997.

At the time of the accident in July 1999, a BBC report gave some idea of conditions underground: "All of South Africa's significant gold deposits are very deep underground, miles down, at depths that ordinary human beings find hard to comprehend.

"The shafts are so deep that the rock is hot to the touch. The devil's workplace. And like the devil's workplace, working at these depths is very dangerous. Newspaper reports talk of mine cave-ins and shaft collapses. The real thing is far nastier, where the pressure builds up in deep level rock until the whole tunnel explodes inwards, footwall, hangingwall, sidewall, the lot, crushing completely anything in its way."

The end of the apartheid regime has brought the introduction of better safety regulations but the unions complain that there are still not enough inspectors to enforce them, and that some mine managers still put output before safety.

Even though there has been some improvement in the industry's safety record since 1994, over the past three years the death rate has averaged more than one miner killed everyday in South Africa's gold mines.

The South African gold industry has to compete on the world markets with modern, open cast gold production in North America and Australia. Here miners cut the tops off low-grade mountain deposits, which are then crushed, soaked in cyanide and the precious metal extracted from the liquor. This low cost, low labour production threatens the very existence of the South African gold industry and increases pressure to maximise production at all costs, resulting in disasters like the one at the Beatrix mine this week.

[peter monahan]

Some of the lower deeps are so hot that the air which runs the drills and so on is refrigerated on surface firts, if the ventilation goes out you'd have about 90 minutes before you baked and the rock is hot enough to burn your skin! Yucch!

What we'll do for the "precious stuff". I've worked in mines, but you wouldn't get me down in one of those!

Peter

[mariner]

Rescuers seek Russia gold mine disaster survivors

1.00pm Saturday September 9, 2006

MOSCOW - Rescuers struggled today to reach more than 20 Russian miners still missing underground more than a day and a half after a fire broke out at their gold mine in Eastern Siberia.

Rescue workers recovered the bodies of at least 11 miners. Smoke and high temperatures hindered the search for the rest, and rescuers did not know if those missing were alive or dead.

Distraught relatives waited outside the Darasun mine, in a remote area near the Chinese border. "My brother is down there," mine worker Nikolai Bronnikov told Rossiya television, then turned away from the camera in tears.

A spokesman for Russia's Emergencies Ministry said the fire had been localised but not put out in the central shaft of the Darasun complex, owned by London-listed Highland Gold.

"There is still hope of finding survivors," he said.

Thirty-three men were trapped when welding work sparked the fire deep underground yesterday but there was confusion over the exact number of dead found.

Highland Gold Mining initially said 12 bodies had been recovered but then changed the figure to 11, matching information given by the Emergencies Ministry.

The environmental watchdog Rosprirodnadzor said it would investigate the Anglo-Russian company's activities.

It later ordered urgent safety inspections of mines operated by the nation's top gold producer, Polyus Gold, and several coal miners, Interfax news agency said.

Highland Gold shares plunged 11 per cent on Friday on the London Stock Exchange to ?1.53, following losses of 4.5 per cent the day before.

Polyus shares fell 1.82 per cent to 1134.0 roubles per share on Russia's MICEX exchange.

Russian media said the miners had breathing devices, which should allow them to hold out for several hours, and air pumped into the shaft improved the chances of survival. Rosprirodnadzor head Oleg Mitvol said yesterday technical violations have been found not only on the Darasun complex, but in all other Highland Gold Mining assets in Russia.

The Darasun mine is the smaller of Highland Gold's two operational gold mines in Russia. The complex produced 11,761 ounces of gold in the first half of this year, around 13 per cent of the company's total production.

Highland Gold is one-fifth owned by Canada's Barrick Gold, the world's largest gold miner. Fleming Family & Partners and its affiliates hold 19.5 per cent and the company's Anglo-Russian management team a further 12.5 per cent.

Tucked in the desolate foothills of Chita, the Darasun mine is Russia's oldest hard-rock gold deposit with proven reserves of 31 tonnes and estimated resources of 96 tonnes.

[mariner]

Beaconsfield mine collapse

The Beaconsfield mine collapse occurred on April 25, 2006 in Beaconsfield, Tasmania, Australia. Of the 17 people who were in the mine at the time, 14 escaped immediately following the collapse, one was killed, and the remaining two were found alive after five days nearly a kilometre below the surface. These two miners were freed on Tuesday May 9, a full two weeks after being trapped.

Mine collapse

At 9:26 pm (Australian Eastern Standard Time) on April 25 2006, a suspected seismic event triggered an underground rock fall at the Beaconsfield gold mine in northern Tasmania. Geoscience Australia said that the earthquake had a magnitude of 2.2, at a shallow depth at coordinates 41.190? S 146.840? E.[1] Earlier speculation had suggested that mine blasting had caused the collapse.[2] Three of the miners working underground at the time were trapped,[3] and early reports suggested that 14 miners who were underground at the time had managed to scramble to safety. The mining company, Beaconsfield Gold Mine Joint Venture, released a press statement saying they held "grave concerns for [the three miners] wellbeing".[4]

Larry Knight (44), Brant Webb (37) and Todd Russell (34), were the three miners who remained unaccounted for. Knight had apparently been killed in the initial rockfall, but Webb and Russell were still alive, trapped in part of the vehicle in which they had been working at the time of the collapse, known as a teleloader or telehandler. They were in a basket at the end of the telehandler's arm, where they had been applying steel mesh to the walls of the tunnel, ironically in order to prevent rockfalls.[5] It was initially misreported that the two miners were saved by a slab of rock that fell on top of the basket, however in a Channel 9 exclusive interview broadcast on May 21 Webb and Russell stated that this was incorrect and that the "ceiling" above them was merely thousands of individual unstable rocks precariously packed together.

The cage was partially filled with rock, and the men were partially buried under some rubble. Webb seemed to have been knocked unconscious for a short time, and Russell's lower body was completely buried.[5] When Webb awoke, the two were able to free themselves and each other from the fallen rock by cutting through their clothes and boots, which were stuck in the rock, using stanley knives.[5]

The miners were able to survive by drinking groundwater, seeping through the rock overhead, which they had collected in their helmets.[5] Webb also had a muesli bar with him, which he offered to cut in half and share with Russell. The men initially agreed to wait 24 hours to eat it, but they continually extended the time, until they decided to eat it on April 29. They then ate small pieces of the bar at a time, to make it last as long as possible. However, Russell later lost a large portion of his half of the bar when it fell out of his pocket.[5]

[edit] Rescue effort

On April 26 a remote-controlled earth mover began clearing the rock underground. On the morning of April 27, at 7:22am, the body of one of the miners was found in the shaft.[6] At around 8pm, the body was retrieved and was identified as the body of Larry Paul Knight, 44, of Launceston.[7] He was the driver of the telehandler.[citation needed]

Rescue workers did not proceed further through the rubble past the back end of the telehandler because it was unsafe,[8] instead choosing to blast a new tunnel across from the main shaft to the side shaft, aiming to come out in front of the telehandler. On April 29, they began blasting a new tunnel, detonating at least six large explosive charges to form the tunnel. The blasts dislodged rock inside the cage of the telehandler, which Webb and Russell attempted to clear, although as the blasts came closer, rock was dislodged faster than they could clear it.[5] Russell recorded the date and time of each blast on his clothing, so that if they died as a result of the blasting, the rescuers would know that they had been alive prior to a particular blast. Both Webb and Russell also wrote letters to their families on their clothing.[5] The two men sang The Gambler by Kenny Rogers (the only song they both knew) in order to keep up their spirits, as they waited for successive blasts to occur in the tunnel. At one point they could hear rescuers talking, and shouted at them to be quiet so that their singing would not be interrupted.[5]

At 5:45 pm on April 30, 2006, Webb and Russell were found alive after being trapped underground for five days. They were detected by thermal imaging cameras and a microphone.[9][10] One rescuer found a direct route to the trapped miners, across the rubble in the side shaft, and was able to get close enough to the basket of the telehandler to shake Russell's hand.[5] This was where a remote-controlled loader had got to the back of the teleloader, but this route was deemed unsafe for rescuing them.[8][11] Webb and Russell themselves did not want the rescuers to attempt to reach them through the rubble, because to do so would require them to cut through the wire on the side of the cage, which was under considerable pressure from the rock above. The two men were afraid that cutting the cage would cause it to collapse.[5]

Rescuers immediately halted blasting in the access tunnel, and instead drilled a smaller hole through the approximately 14.5 metres of rock between the head of the access tunnel and the part of the side shaft where the miners were trapped. Webb and Russell directed the work by listening to the sound of the drilling and judging the direction. The hole was about 90 millimetres in diameter. A PVC pipe was used to line the hole, which was used to deliver fresh water, food and communications equipment to the men.[12][13]

On May 1, 2006 rescuers were still 12 metres from the miners. They were also later sent a digital camera, a torch, dry clothes, magazines, iPods including music from the Foo Fighters, deodorant and toothpaste.[14] They also received letters from their families, and were able to write letters in return. In one letter to his wife, Russell wrote "It's not much of a room we have up here."[5] Russell asked for the previous Saturday's newspaper because he said he would be looking for a new job, after joking about losing his current one for lazing about.[15] One mine official questioned why Russell would want to look for a job, since he already had one, Russell in a later interview saying that he had replied, "I told him to stick it up his..."[5] They were also sent medical supplies, with which Webb was able to treat the injuries to Russell's leg, with advice from paramedics.[5] It was also on May 1 that the two men also asked about Larry Knight, and rescuers told them that he had been found dead.[5]

The rescue effort by drilling was put off on Monday 1 May because of the danger of another collapse. It was decided to use a raise borer anchored in concrete, with the last load of the concrete being delivered before dawn on Wednesday, May 3, 2006. The machine cut a horizontal tunnel one metre wide. [16] Later that day it was announced that the drilling to go the final 12 metres would commence within hours.[17]. At about 6:45pm, drilling of a 20cm pilot hole for the raise borer commenced.[18] Using the normal procedure for this machinery, a pilot hole was drilled, for the larger diameter borer to follow. This took more than three days to complete. According to Beaconsfield mine manager Matthew Gill, the quartz rock which was drilled through was 5 times harder than concrete. The drill was capable of drilling through it at 1 metre per hour, but it was going much more slowly because of the danger of further rock falls, at a rate of around 460 millimetres per hour. [19]

Low-impact explosives were inserted into approximately 50 small holes that were drilled into the last section of rock.[20] Drilling of the rescue tunnel commenced on Thursday 4 May at about 8:00pm guided by the completed pilot hole. It was gouged out to one metre and was planned to come up underneath the men's cage after passing through 16 metres of rock.[21]. The last phase was to involve a miner using hand tools to create an opening whilst lying on his back.[22]

As at 7:00 am on Saturday May 6, the raise borer had drilled about 11 metres of the 14.5 metre rescue tunnel.[23] The mine decided on the shortened route late on Friday night.[24] The major drilling operation was completed by 6:00pm on Saturday, with only a few metres remaining to reach the trapped miners. Several hours work dismantling and removing the boring machine from the escape tunnel were required before the final phase of the rescue commenced.[25]

On May 7, the rescuers reached a belt of hard rock that they found hard to penetrate. As the diamond-edged chainsaws they were using had little effect, they reverted to using low-impact charges. On May 8 the horizontal tunnel was completed, with rescuers beginning tunnelling upwards in the short vertical tunnel, since the horizontal tunnel had been dug lower than the level of the miners. [26] At about 9:30pm a probe passed through the rock below where the miners were located, which indicated there was only a metre between them, including 400 millimetres of hard rock. [27]

After 14 nights, at 4:27 am, rescuers Glenn Burns, Donovan Lightfoot and Royce Gill finally reached the men, one of them yelling "I can see your light" when he broke through the ground which was separating him from the miners, to which the miners replied "I can see your light too". [28][29] Brant Webb was freed at 4:47am on May 9, followed by Todd Russell at 4:54 am. They were driven up the spiral shaft of the mine, arriving at a medical station at the base of the vertical shaft from the surface at about 5:30 am. They were checked by a doctor, and then sent up the lift towards the surface. About thirty metres from the surface, they got out of their wheelchairs, which were moved to the rear of the lift so as to be out of sight.[5] At 5:58 am both men walked out of the lift cage unaided "...punching their fists in the air to the cheers of the Beaconsfield crowds who had gathered outside the mine gate. Wearing their fluoro jackets and lit miner's helmets, the men switched their safety tags to 'safe' on the mine out board before embracing family members who rushed to hug them."[30] Both were then transported to Launceston General Hospital in nearby Launceston just after 6:00 am local time. Russell had an injured knee, and a damaged vertebra which put pressure on his sciatic nerve, while Webb had injuries to both knees, several vertebra and his neck.[5]

[edit] Reaction

Hundreds of journalists arrived in the town to cover the story, causing inconvenience for locals.[31]

Australian Opposition Leader Kim Beazley, at a May Day march in Brisbane, associated the mining accident with the government's new industrial relations legislation, after which Kevin Andrews called on him to apologise for politicising the incident.[32] Australian Prime Minister, John Howard said his message to the miners would be "Everybody is with you, mate".[33]

On the afternoon of May 7, prominent Australian journalist Richard Carleton suffered a heart attack at a press conference while at the mine. He was transported to hospital, before being pronounced dead by a doctor.[34]

Less than six hours after they were rescued, Todd Russell joined more than a thousand mourners at Larry Knight's funeral. The funeral had been postponed constantly in the hope that both rescued miners could attend, before finally settling on Tuesday May 9 at 1:00pm. Russell attended after being discharged from Launceston General Hospital in time.

When Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters heard of the miners' request to have the band's music sent down on mp3 players, he issued a personal message via fax to them indicating he would meet them for a beer. [35]

Following a meeting the Australian Workers' Union held with the miners from Beaconsfield on May 15 they reported that no miner could be found who had been given workplace safety training, miners were unhappy with reductions in the amount of cement used to close in exploited parts of the mine, supports had been removed from lower parts of the mine and mesh intended to prevent rock collapse was known to be ineffective.

Chequebook journalism

Interest in gaining media deals with both survivors is increasing with Oprah Winfrey's production company Harpo expressing interest.[37] Interest from the United States was particularly strong given two January 2006 mining disasters in West Virginia (see: Sago Mine disaster and Aracoma Alma Mine accident) which resulted in the deaths of 15 miners.

Ten News reported that the survivors were offered $3 million each, and Channel Nine boss Eddie McGuire attended the pub where the residents of Beaconsfield were celebrating the rescue. During The Footy Show, they crossed live to a special event held in Beaconsfield where both miners appeared and were questioned by McGuire. The Daily Telegraph revealed that the Nine Network secured a deal for $2.6 million, for a 2-hour special on the night of Sunday May 21 entitled "The Great Escape".[38][39] News reports said the miners told Kim Beazley (who visited them) some details about their ordeal, but they were kept "private", disguising the real reason behind the secrecy.

The value of the story was reduced by the continued stream of media reports detailing the ordeal, such as Enough Rope with Andrew Denton's interview with one of the rescuers Paul Featherstone.[40]

Bad Ground: Inside the Beaconsfield Mine Rescue

In November 2006, a book about the collapse of the mine and the rescue operation was released. Entitled Bad Ground: Inside the Beaconsfield Mine Rescue (ISBN 1921208872), the book was written by journalist Tony Wright, and featured extensive interviews with Russell, Webb and their rescuers.[41]

[mariner]

The 1922 Argonaut Gold Mine Disaster

Occasionally a news event has such an impact it seems to cause even time itself to stop. Such an incident was the Argonaut Gold Mine disaster, one of the most tragic workplace accidents of the 20th century. During the evening of Aug. 27, 1922, 47 men were deep underground working the night shift at the mine near Jackson, Calif. During the men's supper break, the unthinkable happened. An explosion and fire erupted inside the shaft, trapping the men more than 4,600 feet underground. As friends and family gathered, the ordeal of trying to rescue the workers began. Mace's "47 Down" is the riveting account of this tragedy and it has the same emotional impact of the recent best-seller "The Perfect Storm." Mace writes with taut prose, grabbing his reader by the collar. Even after a passage of more than 80 years, it is a compelling story that has lost none of its drama or punch. Drawing on newspaper accounts, diaries, government reports and official documents, Mace captures all of the drama and heartbreak of this event. This book is exceptional historical reporting and highly recommended

Edited November 19, 2006 by mariner

[mariner]

Let`s not forget the classics!!!!

Edited November 19, 2006 by mariner

[bigjarofwasps]

Some of the lower deeps are so hot that the air which runs the drills and so on is refrigerated on surface firts, if the ventilation goes out you'd have about 90 minutes before you baked and the rock is hot enough to burn your skin! Yucch!

What we'll do for the "precious stuff". I've worked in mines, but you wouldn't get me down in one of those!

Peter

My word Peter, I had no idea. I certainly wouldn`t want to be working in those conditions either. The desert was hot enough for me!!!!

I bet the miners get paid peanuts as well, especially in the bad old days, if you get my meaning. No offence to any South African memebers on the forum .