mining – Page 14 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

Unacceptable levels of death at Australian mines

In The Australian on 28 August 2008 was an article about the Australian Workers Union wanting to strengthen its industrial presence in the mining communities of the Pilbara region. Nothing surprising in that but the spur for this latest move was the death on 25 August of a 29-year-old worker in the Yandi mine workshop owned by BHP Billiton. The company acknowledged the fatality a media release.

The company has had several recent deaths in its facilities. According to a report on 30 July 2008:

“A 52-year-old Port Hedland man was conducting maintenance work on a scissor lift at Port Hedland when it fell on him at 1300 AEST on Tuesday, a police spokeswoman said.”

CEO Marius Klopper admitted on 20 August 2008 that BHP Billiton has had 11 fatalities so far in 2008. He is quoted as saying:

“The fatalities are difficult to talk about without getting emotional. The event that really shook us was that we had a helicopter crash where basically a pilot flew a helicopter into terrain and we had five fatalities. That was a truly tragic event and would be the single biggest event that we’ve had.”

“I think historically, we probably have reduced our fatality rates over time. It varies certainly from year to year but unfortunately we still have multiple fatalities every year in this business, which is something that we’ve got to continue to work on.”

Klopper’s comments received minimal media coverage outside of Western Australia. Perhaps that was because the CEO made those comments at the same time as announcing his company’s record profit of almost $A18 billion.

Legal games at the Beaconsfield inquest

The legal team representing the Beaconsfield mine at the inquest into the death of Larry Knight have returned early – much to the annoyance of the Coroner, Rod Chandler. The team headed up by David Neal SC returned to the Launceston inquest on 28 August 2008 according to The Australian newspaper.

It’s an extraordinary development due to the circumstances of their withdrawal after their opening submission. Rod Chandler is quoted as saying

“In my view, to withdraw in this manner showed disrespect to this court. More critically, it showed gross disrespect to Mr Knight’s family. Such insensitive conduct does not, in my opinion, have any place in this jurisdiction.”

The newspaper went on to report that

“Mr Chandler said Dr Neal had failed to explain what had changed since the mine claimed on July 22 that it could not assist the inquest any further than its opening submission.”

To those who have said in comments to this blog that the lawyers are astute poker players, I would ask what benefit the legal team derived from getting the Coroner off-side?

To those who said that sitting through an inquest unnecessarily is too expensive, I would ask, is it now less expensive?

Lawyers usually have some sense of public feeling, media appearance or image. If this team had such skills, they forgot to apply them in this case. Let’s hope that their decisions do not lead to a legal cock-up.

Who manages safety – employers or inspectors?

Over the last few days at the Tasmanian inquest into the death of Larry Knight, several geotechnical consultants and experts have been going through their reports to Beaconsfield Mine management. These assessment reports were undertaken before the collapse that caused Larry Knight’s death. The impression from media reports is that mine management listened to, or read, the recommendations and made a decision. That decision seems to have not given the technical advice the weight that hindsight now shows was insufficient but hindsight does that and Coroners understand this.

Also safety decisions are made by the employer in consultation with their workforce and external experts, where necessary. Beaconsfield Mine management did this. The decision to mine on that fateful day obviously proved wrong but perhaps the decision was understandable.

The Australian on 12 August 2008 reported that senior technical consultant Frans Basson admitted that the mine was technically “in breach of his written recommendation to management”. I found this extraordinary as “breach” is a term more often applied to when a rule is broken. It seems that the mine management chose not take on the recommendation of a consultant. That happens all the time but to give the decision more significance than this is, perhaps, a little unfair. Let’s hope this was lawyer’s hyperbole.

How to describe the comments by former Mt Lyell engineering supervisor and ex-parliamentarian, Peter Schulze is more of a challenge. Inaccurate is probably the most generous term. At a Tasmanian Legislative Council committee on 13 August 2008, Peter Schulze criticised “all these experts who pontificate with the benefit of hindsight” about mine accidents. Okay, the wording is extreme but he makes a similar point to mine above.

He also echoes some of the recent criticisms of the OHS regulator in Tasmania, Workplace Standards. By inverting some of his comments reported in The Advocate on 14 August 2008, he believes that current inspectors are under-skilled in the mining sector and under-paid and that there are not enough. I would support him in his calls for additional enforcement resources but he is confused over the role of the inspectorate.

The primary responsibility for safety in a workplace is held by the employer – the controller of the workplace and main beneficiary of its productivity. Peter Schulze says that

“The inspectorate tends to isolate itself from accidents and comes in to blame the company … rather than being a party (to safety procedures and checks) and accepting some responsibility.”

Why on earth should a government department accept any responsibility for the operations of a privately-run business when there is legislation that states the responsibility rests with the employer?

Peter sees the system as being adversarial. There are clear roles for the differing elements in a workplace but conflict is resolved through negotiation, consultation and resolution. An adversarial climate in a workplace indicates a dysfunctional workplace but this does not mean the regulatory system is at fault. Safety management systems are a systematic management of a workplace with the aim of improving safety. Management is the key and this rests with the employer.

Professor Michael Quinlan, Beaconsfield and Safety Cases

I have spoken elsewhere of the non-release of Professor Michael Quinlan’s OHS report into the Beaconsfield mine. On 4 August 2008, he spoke at the coronial inquest into the death of Larry Knight. According to media reports, Professor Quinlan said about the rockfall that killed Larry Knight:

“I can’t say the event wouldn’t have occurred – I can say that the chances of it occurring would have been reduced… They are steps that should have been taken, in my view.”

He has also been very hot on the validity of risk assessment processes at workplace. As part of Melick report into the disaster, Melick used Quinlan’s report when writing

“As far as can be determined, the risk ranking of ground control was not reassessed or revised in the light of these (earlier rockfall) events…. The evidence indicates that the possibility of further significant seismic events in the mine in 915 and 925 metre levels was foreseeable.”

In December 2007, I interviewed Professor Quinlan about a range of OHS issues including major hazards. In the SafetyAtWork podcast, he said that some mines in Western Australia have begun to apply a safety case regime to safety because of the high-hazard nature of the workplace. At that time he supported such a move.

Quinlan pointed out, though, that safety case regulation is very resource-intensive and, therefore, only relative to large organisations and well-resourced regulators.

It is unlikely that such a combination could have been applied to the mine in Beaconsfield as Quinlan is reported as saying at the inquest that

“Workplace Standards Tasmania was under-resourced and [he] recommended the development of mine-specific safety laws and trade-union mine inspectors.”

Many submissions to the National OHS Law Review have mentioned the relevance of a safety case approach to OHS but only one of the currently available submissions mentions that the safety case approach could be applied to mines.

Why are many of China’s coalmines closed?

Safety At Work magazine has been reporting on the seemingly endless deaths in the Chinese mining industry for many years. Many of the mine fatalities are of multiples that would generate huge investigations in the west. Many deaths are compounded by the attempts of mine managers to minimise the scale of the disasters by delaying reporting the incident, not reporting at all, or disposing of the bodies.

These incidents have occurred mostly in privately-run mines and over the last couple of years the government has had regular crackdowns on the industry.

China is a good example of a country that manages safety in reaction to disasters. Poor safety management is often ignored as long as production is guaranteed. This is evident in its manufacturing sector as much as it is in mining.

John Garnaut in The Age newspaper on August 4 2008 reports on the actions of the Chinese government in the mining sector in the lead up to the Beijing Olympics. Garnaut reports that migrant workers were sent home weeks ago without pay. At one mine he attended, work was stopped by management, ostensibly due to his presence as a journalist.

The closure of these mines has had a heavy impact on the coal supply and coal prices and Garnaut says that the action of the government has come about to

“prevent the Olympic Games from being marred by embarrassing reports of mine disasters.”

China’s decision shows how sensitive it is to criticism from other countries. The mess over internet access is a further example.

China does not only manage safety reactively, it manages through diversion, concealment and censorship.

What Garnaut’s reporting and China’s censorship shows is that safety of workers, and accountability of business owners can be improved through the attention of outsiders. For over seven years, in my experience, China has been experiencing almost monthly fatalities in its coal industry. I have been publishing whatever reports I can obtain (legitimately) from the wire service, however similar reports have not been appearing in the mainstream, or event the trade, press. The community is generally unaware of the cultural negligence that the Chinese system of production and regulation allows.

Perhaps it is a truth that few of us really care but one of the major threats to any management process is hypocrisy. The Chinese government may be comfortable with that but our own governments should not be hypocrites in our trade negotiations with partners like China.

UPDATE

The Associated Press has reported a gas explosion in a coal mine in at the Baijiagou mine in the northeast of Liaoning province on 18 August 2008. Twenty-four workers are trapped but fifty-six other miners escaped without injury. The story came through the Xinhua News Agency in China, so it will be worth seeing, during this Olympics fervour, what attention this disaster receives from the West

Bank influence on Beaconsfield Mine

It is all too easy to misread the headline on page 7 of today’s Australian newspaper:

MacBank ‘had input’ into goldmine

This seems to confirm the recent statements by miners to the coronial inquest into Larry Knight’s death at Beaconsfield Mine, and accusations by unions. The headline is based on the statements made by Michael Ryan who was the administrator to Allstate Explorations. Ryan said that the Macquarie Bank had representatives on the joint venture committee and those bank representatives asked questions about the mine. However Ryan could not recall if questions were raised by them about production levels.

Ryan said that Matthew Gill, the mine manager, had made several unsuccessful attempts to have government safety inspectors visit the mine. The article does not specify the reason for Gill’s attempts.

Michael Ryan said that he would approve any expenditure on safety at the mine.

The article says that in the month prior to the April 2006 rockfall, Ryan asked about safety in the mine.

“He said he asked Mr Gill on a number of occasions if the mine was safe, including in March 2006, after observing an unusual number of rocks caught in support mesh. “(Gill’s) answers were to the effect that it was (safe).”

Matthew Gill has spoken publicly several times about his experiences following the rockfall and is now on the professional speakers’ circuit. He was appointed the Managing Director of Monarch Gold Mining Company.

Crandall Canyon Mine Investigation Report

On 24 July 2008 the U.S. Department of Labor’s Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) announced that it has fined the operator of the Crandall Canyon Mine in Emery County, Utah, $1,340,000 for violations that directly contributed to the deaths of six miners in 2007.

According to MSHA’s media release, Agapito Associates Inc., a mining engineering consultant, was fined $220,000 for faulty analysis of the mine’s design. MSHA cited the mine operator for 11 additional, non-contributory violations issued as the result of the investigation. The proposed penalty for these violations is $296,664, bringing the total proposed penalties against the mine operator to $1,636,664. Crandall Canyon Mine is operated by Genwal Resources Inc., whose parent company is Murray Energy Corp.

Safety At Work magazine covered the incident extensively as it provided a stained mirror to the lucky rescue of the miners from Tasmania’s Beaconsfield mine. I reported elsewhere on the fresh seismology findings.

The MSHA report states that

“Three separate methods of analysis employed as part of MSHA’s investigation confirmed that the mining plan was destined to fail.” (my emphasis)

To a non-US observer the fine seems remarkably light given that the mining plan was critically deficient, 6 people died in the first incident and 3 died ten days later.

Not everyone is happy with how the investigation has been conducted.

MSHA accident investigators have cited Genwal Resources Inc. and Agapito Associates Inc. for the following violations:

The mine operator did not immediately contact MSHA after coal outbursts threw coal into the mine openings and disrupted regular mining activities for more than one hour on three separate occasions prior to the August 6 outburst.
The mine operator failed to propose revisions to the roof control plan when conditions (coal outbursts) clearly indicated that the plan was inadequate and miners were being exposed to dangerous conditions.
The operator violated the approved roof control plan by removing coal that was required to support the roof.
The operator’s outside engineering firm failed to recommend safe mining methods and pillar/barrier dimensions, and the operator failed to maintain pillar dimensions that would effectively control coal outbursts.

The complete accident investigation report (16 megabyte) is available at as is MSHA’s response and additional content.

The earlier investigation report by the Utah Mine Safety Commission is available HERE

Category: mining

Unacceptable levels of death at Australian mines

Like this:

Legal games at the Beaconsfield inquest

Like this:

Who manages safety – employers or inspectors?

Like this:

Professor Michael Quinlan, Beaconsfield and Safety Cases

Like this:

Why are many of China’s coalmines closed?

Like this:

Bank influence on Beaconsfield Mine

Like this:

Crandall Canyon Mine Investigation Report

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: