In the fatal incident on May 14 at Broken Hill’s Southern Operations lease the 55 year old worker, who had been carrying out general mine duties and assisting other workers, was found lying unconscious beside his light vehicle at about 3.30pm.

The vehicle was parked in a storage drive used to store mining consumables about 788m below the surface.

Although co-workers and then mine trained emergency response members administered first aid including defibrillation and cardiopulmonary resuscitation on the way to the surface and in the ambulance on the journey to the Broken Hill Base Hospital, he did not respond and was declared dead on arrival.

According to the Resources Regulator’s investigation report prepared for the Department of Planning and Environment and the NSW Coroner, there was no evidence that the worker’s death could be attributed to any work health and safety-related matters and it was likely the death was from natural causes arising from non-work, health-related issues.

Accordingly there will be no inquest by the NSW Coroner.

At the time of the death the Resources Regulator issued a call for mine and petroleum site operators to remember their duty to monitor the health of workers and the conditions at the workplace to prevent illness or injury of workers, in accordance with the NSW Work Health and Safety Act 2011 and Work Health and Safety (Mines and Petroleum Sites) Act 2013.

Mine operators were also told there should be effective health monitoring programs in place on their sites to make sure workers are healthy and fit enough to work underground.