Mining inquiry will have much to unearth
Last week’s Pike River coalmine tragedy will raise big questions on the sustainability of the mining industry in the country. While the immediate priority of the recovery team will be to bring home the 29 perished workmen, it is equally urgent to find out what went wrong and how to prevent such incidents in the future.
Reuniting the departed men with their families to enable them to carry out last rites and knowing the reasons for their sad end would bring a sense of closure for their loved ones. The country, even the world, has stood stolidly by the grieving families as one, hopefully bringing them a measure of strength to bear their sad loss.
ACC is expected to make the biggest single payout to the affected families in the coming days and Prime Minister John Key and Mining Minister Gerry Brownlee have said there will be a commission of inquiry comprising an international mining expert and a judge among others that will be constituted immediately.
The commission will have wide-ranging powers including those to subpoena in a bid to get to the heart of the matter in the quickest possible time.
The Pike River operation has an Indian angle. A lot of the coal mined there heads for India and the mine itself has part Indian ownership: Gujarat NRE Coke has a 10% stake while Saurashtra Fuels owns 8.5%.
Meanwhile the questions are piling up. Some of these are commonsense questions and if the answers to them have anything to do with business or work practices such as cost cutting, incompetence or negligence, those responsible must face the full brunt of the law.
For one, how did the lethal build up of gas go undetected until the first explosion? Surely, the gas was building up over several hours before the Friday shift began, unless it was a sudden torrent gushing through the mine that left no time for the workmen to take evasive action.
If the build up was slow, which could well be the case, why did any gas assaying equipment within the mine not detect it, which if it would have, would have prevented or warned the men before they went in? After all, the explosion took place early into their shift – so the methane and the carbon monoxide must have been building up for a while.
Second, according to international best practice, we are told, every mineworker wears a sensor that gives their location to monitors above ground. In briefing after briefing at news conferences, the authorities gave conjectured locations of the miners scattered throughout the mine on schematic maps and diagrams. Nobody seemed sure where the miners were. Does this mean the miners had not been wearing the locator devices and were not being monitored from above ground? If so, why?
The high concentration of methane and carbon monoxide seeping out of the drilled borehole and the second explosion ultimately seemed to justify the decision not to launch a rescue mission into the mine but the question does remain whether there was at all a time window immediately after the first explosion when the gas levels are relatively depleted?
The robots too were a disappointment. The first one came a cropper in wet conditions, prompting the question that has now been flashed across the media: “why they didn’t drape it in glad wrap before they sent it in?”
This robot, we are told, is the one used for bomb disposal. One shudders to think what would happen if it sputtered to a halt and failed while on a mission to defuse a bomb on a windy and rainy day, God forbid, on Aotea Square or the forecourt of the Beehive.
Its speaks poorly of those responsible for designing it, especially in view of the Defence Force’s chief design scientist resigned after a news channel unearthed highly questionable claims on his CV.
The second robot took a few pictures, sent them back but ground to a halt after its batteries went flat about half way up the 2.2 kilometre ramp, adding zilch to any information within the mine.
In sum, there was a complete information blackout, which prevented the rescue team – now re-designated as the recovery team – from making any informed decision about mounting an operation. The decision not to do so was solely based on playing safe – something that seemed to have been vindicated by the second blast and the continuing build up of gas.
The suspension in mining activity will certainly bring economic pressure on the community and the region. The mine itself employs 150 people and several more as contractors. There will also be a cloud on the mining industry as a whole and New Zealand’s very approach to mining.
It is also likely that the tragic accident will also put paid to any ambitions the National government might have had of reviving the recently shelved idea of stepping up mining on at least a small part of DoC land.
These are the tougher questions that must be addressed in the near future – after answers are found to the more pressing ones relating to the cause of the accident and how to prevent it from happening again.
Last week’s Pike River coalmine tragedy will raise big questions on the sustainability of the mining industry in the country. While the immediate priority of the recovery team will be to bring home the 29 perished workmen, it is equally urgent to find out what went wrong and how to prevent such...
Last week’s Pike River coalmine tragedy will raise big questions on the sustainability of the mining industry in the country. While the immediate priority of the recovery team will be to bring home the 29 perished workmen, it is equally urgent to find out what went wrong and how to prevent such incidents in the future.
Reuniting the departed men with their families to enable them to carry out last rites and knowing the reasons for their sad end would bring a sense of closure for their loved ones. The country, even the world, has stood stolidly by the grieving families as one, hopefully bringing them a measure of strength to bear their sad loss.
ACC is expected to make the biggest single payout to the affected families in the coming days and Prime Minister John Key and Mining Minister Gerry Brownlee have said there will be a commission of inquiry comprising an international mining expert and a judge among others that will be constituted immediately.
The commission will have wide-ranging powers including those to subpoena in a bid to get to the heart of the matter in the quickest possible time.
The Pike River operation has an Indian angle. A lot of the coal mined there heads for India and the mine itself has part Indian ownership: Gujarat NRE Coke has a 10% stake while Saurashtra Fuels owns 8.5%.
Meanwhile the questions are piling up. Some of these are commonsense questions and if the answers to them have anything to do with business or work practices such as cost cutting, incompetence or negligence, those responsible must face the full brunt of the law.
For one, how did the lethal build up of gas go undetected until the first explosion? Surely, the gas was building up over several hours before the Friday shift began, unless it was a sudden torrent gushing through the mine that left no time for the workmen to take evasive action.
If the build up was slow, which could well be the case, why did any gas assaying equipment within the mine not detect it, which if it would have, would have prevented or warned the men before they went in? After all, the explosion took place early into their shift – so the methane and the carbon monoxide must have been building up for a while.
Second, according to international best practice, we are told, every mineworker wears a sensor that gives their location to monitors above ground. In briefing after briefing at news conferences, the authorities gave conjectured locations of the miners scattered throughout the mine on schematic maps and diagrams. Nobody seemed sure where the miners were. Does this mean the miners had not been wearing the locator devices and were not being monitored from above ground? If so, why?
The high concentration of methane and carbon monoxide seeping out of the drilled borehole and the second explosion ultimately seemed to justify the decision not to launch a rescue mission into the mine but the question does remain whether there was at all a time window immediately after the first explosion when the gas levels are relatively depleted?
The robots too were a disappointment. The first one came a cropper in wet conditions, prompting the question that has now been flashed across the media: “why they didn’t drape it in glad wrap before they sent it in?”
This robot, we are told, is the one used for bomb disposal. One shudders to think what would happen if it sputtered to a halt and failed while on a mission to defuse a bomb on a windy and rainy day, God forbid, on Aotea Square or the forecourt of the Beehive.
Its speaks poorly of those responsible for designing it, especially in view of the Defence Force’s chief design scientist resigned after a news channel unearthed highly questionable claims on his CV.
The second robot took a few pictures, sent them back but ground to a halt after its batteries went flat about half way up the 2.2 kilometre ramp, adding zilch to any information within the mine.
In sum, there was a complete information blackout, which prevented the rescue team – now re-designated as the recovery team – from making any informed decision about mounting an operation. The decision not to do so was solely based on playing safe – something that seemed to have been vindicated by the second blast and the continuing build up of gas.
The suspension in mining activity will certainly bring economic pressure on the community and the region. The mine itself employs 150 people and several more as contractors. There will also be a cloud on the mining industry as a whole and New Zealand’s very approach to mining.
It is also likely that the tragic accident will also put paid to any ambitions the National government might have had of reviving the recently shelved idea of stepping up mining on at least a small part of DoC land.
These are the tougher questions that must be addressed in the near future – after answers are found to the more pressing ones relating to the cause of the accident and how to prevent it from happening again.
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