On Monday night this week the area surrounding Anglo's Grasstree longwall mine in Central Queensland experienced high wind. The gale caused a support arm on a substation adjacent to Grasstree's lease to fail. This led to a short circuit and power was lost to the mine, which blacked out.

“That then initiated a response where we had to get generators going and started the fans to ventilate the place and evacuated people from the mine," said Jakeman, who has just spent three days at the operation.

The Moranbah North evacuation occurred about two weeks ago when gas levels rose. Jakeman said a heating did not occur and that no heating had been found since.

“We don't really know why we had an increase in levels but we took a precautionary measure to get the people out of there," Jakeman said of the evacuation of the northern Bowen Basin mine.

Jakeman said Moranbah North had put increased monitoring in place since the evacuation.

“Anytime we do an evacuation we look at things to see what we can do better," he said.

Anglo is now conducting a review, including interviews with the mine people involved, the Mines Inspectorate and the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, to see where the operations can be improved.

“We take these things very seriously," Jakeman said. "We use these incidents to look at what we can do better."

CFMEU Queensland district union inspector Tim Whyte has highlighted the union's concern over the incidents in a letter to Queensland Mines and Energy Minister Geoff Wilson on Wednesday.

“The incidents outlined [in the letter to Wilson] could have quite easily resulted in a catastrophic mine explosion," Whyte told International Longwall News.

He called for an urgent meeting with all relevant stakeholders and their representatives in Brisbane on Monday.