At the time of publication, year-to-date worker deaths in the Australian mining industry totalled nine, compared to five in 2012, according to Safe Work Australia.
This constitutes an 80% year-on-year increase in mining deaths in 2013.
The result surpassed the seven deaths in 2000 – leaving this as the worst year for fatalities on record for the 21st century.
Most recently, this includes two worker deaths earlier this week inside copper mines of Tasmania’s Mount Lyell underground operation in Queenstown.
Details on the accident are pending as an investigation continues, with WorkSafe Tasmania inspectors and police forensics officers attending the scene.
The tragedy came just days after the death of a contractor at Newcrest Mining’s Telfer mine in Western Australia.
The first of the two WA mining deaths of the year occurred in August, at Fortescue Metal Group’s Christmas Creek mine, where a worker was crushed in an ore processing plant. This prompted the company to take over control of the facility from a Mineral Resources subsidiary.
The largest state began 2013 by celebrating its first fatality-free year in more than a century in 2012, citing the effective enforcement of its high safety standards.
But as early as March, we had a vivid example of why technology and policy developments were not enough.
The culture of safety may well have been the theme of the year when an internet dance craze performed by 14 stressed miners at Gold Fields’ Agnew operation in WA inspired Barminco to fire the men for breaching safety protocols.
Overseas safety events grabbing the most Aussie headlines over 2013 included the tunnel collapse at Indonesia’s Grasberg mine, with 28 workers killed, and the reverberating drama at New Zealand’s Pike River mine, where a scathing final judgement in May determined that the site should not have been in operation at the time of the 2010 blast that killed 29 men.
Progress over the year was mostly represented by a number of government and industry initiatives.
In WA, the government beefed up its safety team with seven new specialist inspectors, taking the state’s inspector workforce to 107% higher than it was in late 2009. And an injury at Ansteel’s Karara operation in May led to a Department of Mines safety crackdown for the Mid West region.
In Queensland, an overhaul of mine safety and health laws was planned following a horror year of coal mine injuries in 2012. Proposed reforms included an increased number of safety representatives and requirements for a single system to cover company employees as well as contractors.
In November, Queensland Mines Minister Andrew Cripps called for operators to update their contingency plans ahead of cyclone season, acknowledging the serious impact of flooding in light of the expansion of the 2013-14 Fitzroy Basin mine water pilot program.
BHP Billiton was at the centre of several major safety stories over the year, including the death of a contractor in June at BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance’s Daunia project in Queensland due to a non-work related incident.
BHP began the year with a crushed arm injury at its Broadmeadow mine in Queensland and a fatality at its IndoMet mine in Indonesia. In February, the miner was found guilty of not providing a safe work environment during the death of a worker in 2008 in Port Hedland.
The company was also fined $A238,000 in October over the death of a worker at WA’s Yandi mine near Newman in 2008.
In November, nine workers were rescued from BHP Nickel West’s earthquake-prone Perseverance mine in WA after being trapped underground for nine hours.
BHP also stood out over the year for its contributions to safety technology, with a $1.5 million investment in September to combat the dangers of truck driver fatigue through eye-tracking alarm systems.
In other tech developments this year, the Queensland Department of Natural Resources and Mines indicated it was going to mandate proximity detection systems.
Becker Mining announced a three-year agreement with ICAS Australia for the distribution of its second-generation surface collision avoidance system and Caterpillar teamed up with Canberra-based Seeing Machines to develop fatigue-monitoring equipment.
Dangers related to collision avoidance were highlighted earlier this month when a contractor driving a light vehicle to a meal break was crushed to death under the wheel of a dump truck at Glencore Xstrata’s Ravensworth mine in New South Wales.
The truck driver was taken to hospital suffering shock and an investigation into the precise cause of the incident was initiated.
Around the world, safety was both an operational and macroeconomic issue as it moulded company policies and investor sentiment.
Safety worries spooked investors out of conflict-prone Mali earlier in the year despite gold companies reporting business as usual in the country’s relatively stable southern region.
In South Africa, operators, communities and investors alike watched nervously as isolated incidences of violence over the year seemed to threaten to rekindle the disorder that led to dozens of deaths and injuries across several striking mine sites in 2012.
In February, Gold One International suspended its operation in Johannesburg and its Cooke 4 mine following the death of a worker. In the same month, rubber bullets fired at Anglo American Platinum’s Siphumele mine injured 12 personnel and put union tension back on high alert.
A worker was killed at Gold One’s Cooke 3 mine in May due to a fall of ground.
Also in South Africa, separate fall-of-ground incidents killed a contractor at Aquarius Platinum’s Kroondal mine in March and a Harmony Gold Mining Company employee at the Tshepong mine in November.
Uranium producer Paladin Energy experienced trouble at its African operations as well, with a death at the Kayelekera mine in Malawi in July and the hospitalisation of three miners in October in an electrical accident at the Langer Heinrich operation in Namibia.
More recent international safety news included the death of at least three miners after a confrontation at Barrick Gold’s Porgera mine in Papua New Guinea led to two illegal workers falling into a pit.
The nature of many of the overseas safety infractions may serve to reinforce the importance of creating a safety culture, rather than simply a policy or a technology-reliant system.
A safety panel assembled in August at Asia-Pacific’s International Mining Exhibition in Sydney flagged industry culture and communication as having major safety shortcomings.
The panel’s often emotional exchanges focused largely on communications breakdowns between miners and management, and a sense that responsiveness to required safety alerts was often insufficient.
“When you go past time and time again and you don’t see [requested safety upgrades] done, and then management turn around and they just bought a new bloody helicopter to have a look at some dams, you’re thinking, hang on a second, what the hell’s going on here,” underground entrapment survivor Brant Webb said.
“They don’t give a toss about us down here. They go and get a helicopter to look at a dam – they can drive there for Christ’s sake.”
