Mining Accidents, Deaths, Cave-Ins, Rescues, Mine Safety and Industrial Disease – Page 11

Missing miners found dead after China coal mine blast (Deutsche Welle‎ – November 2, 2016)

November 2, 2016

http://www.dw.com/en/

All 33 miners who were trapped in a coal mine following an explosion in Chongqing, China have been confirmed dead. Chinese work safety officials have promised to “strictly punish” those responsible for safety lapses.

The dozens of coal miners who were trapped underground in a gas explosion earlier this week have all been found dead, reported Chinese state media on Wednesday.

The bodies of the last 15 missing miners were retrieved from the privately-owned Jinshangou mine near the southwestern city of Chongqing, the official Xinhua news agency said – bringing the death toll up to 33. Only two workers managed to escape Monday’s blast. Over 200 rescuers worked around the clock but were unable to find any survivors.

No justice for Sudbury miner, union says – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – October 27, 2016)

October 27, 2016

http://www.thesudburystar.com/

United Steelworkers is slamming the Government of Ontario, the attorney general and police for not pursuing a criminal investigation into the April 6, 2014, death of Paul Rochette and the critical injury of Justin Stewart at Vale Ltd.’s Copper Cliff Smelter.

The union is calling out the parties for allowing Vale to enter a plea Monday in the Ontario Court of Justice on several charges laid in 2015 under the Occupational Health and Safety Act. Vale was fined $1 million after pleading guilty to four charges, and supervisor Greg Taylor was fined $3,000 after pleading guilty to a single charge.

Vale had been facing nine charges and Taylor three. Two other supervisors had five charges between them. All charges but the ones to which Vale and Taylor pleaded, 12 in all, were withdrawn so no trial was held.

Vale got off light: Family, co-worker of Rochette – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – October 26, 2016)

October 26, 2016

http://www.thesudburystar.com/

The question begs to be asked after Monday’s sentencing of Vale Canada Ltd. to $1 million in fines in the April 2014 death of Paul Rochette: Was justice served? The family of the 36-year-old millwright doesn’t think so. Nor does the man injured while working with Rochette to free a large metal pin from the jaws of an ore crusher at the Copper Cliff Smelter Complex.

Their efforts went tragically wrong when the pin let go and flew off, killing Rochette and seriously injuring millwright Justin Stewart, then 28. Stewart’s name had not been made public, at his request, until he appeared in the Ontario Court of Justice and read a victim impact statement. His injuries were always characterized by Vale as “facial lacerations.”

One look at Stewart tells you it was far more serious than that. He remained in hospital 11 days, was off work six months and to this day cannot remember what occurred near the No. 87 conveyor.

Vale fined $1M in worker’s death – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – October 25, 2016)

October 25, 2016

http://www.thesudburystar.com/

Vale Canada Ltd. was fined $1 million plus court costs and a 25 per cent victim surcharge Monday after pleading guilty to four charges under the Occupational Health and Safety Act in the death of Paul Rochette.

The 36-year-old millwright was killed on the job April 6, 2014, while trying to remove the head of a moil or large steel pin that was stuck in the jaws of a machine called a Farrell crusher on a conveyor belt in the smelter complex.

The millwright with whom Rochette was working, Justin Stewart, suffered critical injuries when the head of the moil let go. Vale supervisor Greg Taylor, acting as a worker that day, pleaded guilty to one count of working in a manner that could endanger himself or another worker. He was fined $3,000 plus court costs and the victim surcharge.

Both Vale and Taylor were given four months to pay their fines.

Aberfan disaster: 50th anniversary marked with silence (British Broadcasting Corporation – October 21, 2016)

October 21, 2016

http://www.bbc.com/

Wales fell silent on Friday as the country remembered the Aberfan disaster 50 years ago.
On 21 October 1966, a mountain of coal waste slid down into a school and houses in the Welsh village, killing 144 people, including 116 children. A day of events to commemorate the disaster included a service at Aberfan Cemetery at 09:15 BST on Friday.

Prince Charles has visited the Aberfan memorial garden and will unveil a plaque in memory of the victims. Earlier, he visited the Aberfan Cemetery and laid a wreath.

He also attended a reception with the families of some of those who lost their lives, before signing a book of remembrance. Prince Charles said anyone old enough remembers where they were when they heard the “appalling news” about the Aberfan disaster – saying he was at school in Scotland.

[Coal mining tragedy] Aberfan: The mistake that cost a village its children – by Ceri Jackson (British Broadcasting Corporation – October 21, 2016)

October 21, 2016

http://www.bbc.co.uk/

“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” The phrase is one of the most enduring and quoted of modern literature, an almost proverbial reference to the archaic and bygone.

It is the opening line of LP Hartley’s 1953 novel The Go-Between, an eerie story set 50 years on from a tumultuous experience of an adolescent boy; an experience so devastating it propelled him prematurely into adulthood and ruined the rest of his life.

The story of what happened in the south Wales mining village of Aberfan is a devastating one which dealt a similar fate to the children who survived it. It too is a story for which Hartley’s opening line could not be more pertinent.

It is exactly 50 years since tragedy swooped down on Aberfan killing 116 children and 28 adults. Revisiting the “obscenity” of 21 October 1966, and its aftermath is a stark reminder of the incongruities of the past.

[Sudbury Basin] Charges in miner’s death – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – October 20, 2016)

October 20, 2016

http://www.thesudburystar.com/

Tears will be shed today by hard-rock miners at Nickel Rim South Mine, by the union that represents them, and by friends and family as they mark the one-year anniversary of the workplace death of a man who was beloved.

Richard Pigeau, 54, was killed Oct. 20, 2015, when he was struck by a piece of machinery while working in the mine owned by Sudbury Integrated Nickel Operations (Glencore).

Just days before this sombre anniversary, the Ministry of Labour laid seven charges under the Occupational Health and Safety Act against Glencore Canada Corp. and two against a supervisor after a one-year investigation into Pigeau’s death.

Liberals under fire for delay on asbestos ban – by Tavia Grant (Globe and Mail – October 11, 2016)

October 11, 2016

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/

A year after the Liberals were elected with a promise to ban the use of asbestos in Canada, no such move has been made – inaction that is dismaying to health experts, labour groups and families affected by asbestos-related diseases.

“Our position, and the evidence, is as clear as it can be: that asbestos is a carcinogen that is a major cause of cancer, including lung cancers, that kill many Canadians,” said Gabriel Miller, director of public issues at the Canadian Cancer Society. A ban “should be an as-soon-as-possible priority for the federal government,” he said.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said the federal government is “moving forward on a ban,” although he gave no timeline and it was not an official announcement. “We are moving to ban asbestos,” he told a conference of building trades unions on May 10. “Its impact on workers far outweighs any benefits that it might provide.”

THE COBALT PIPELINE – by Jorge Ribas (Washington Post – September 30, 2016)

October 4, 2016

https://www.washingtonpost.com/

Tracing the path from deadly hand-dug mines in Congo to consumers’ phones and laptops

The sun was rising over one of the richest mineral deposits on Earth, in one of the poorest countries, as Sidiki Mayamba got ready for work. Mayamba is a cobalt miner. And the red-dirt savanna stretching outside his door contains such an astonishing wealth of cobalt and other minerals that a geologist once described it as a “scandale geologique.”

This remote landscape in southern Africa lies at the heart of the world’s mad scramble for cheap cobalt, a mineral essential to the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that power smartphones, laptops and electric vehicles made by companies such as Apple, Samsung and major automakers.

But Mayamba, 35, knew nothing about his role in this sprawling global supply chain. He grabbed his metal shovel and broken-headed hammer from a corner of the room he shares with his wife and child. He pulled on a dust-stained jacket.

[Mining] Project aims to link powder with diseases – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – October 4, 2016)

October 4, 2016

http://www.thesudburystar.com/

The voice of James Johnson Hobbs, 76, may have been silenced by Parkinson’s disease, a neurological disorder daughter Janice Martell believes was caused by a substance inhaled in his workplace.

As long as she draws breath, the Elliot Lake woman will fight to tell the stories and be the voice of thousands of miners exposed to aluminum dust and try to win compensation for their illnesses.

As many as 20,000 miners were exposed to a dust called McIntyre powder, developed at McIntyre Mine in Timmins more than 60 years ago. The premise behind the powder was that it would coat the lungs of workers heading into gold and uranium mines, and prevent them from contracting deadly silicosis.

Potential $1 billion work to clean up Arizona’s dangerous Navajo uranium mines – by Mike Sunnucks (Phoenix Business Journal – September 19, 2016)

September 20, 2016

http://www.bizjournals.com/

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is starting what could be a $1 billion, years-along process to clean up abandoned uranium mines on Navajo Nation land in northern Arizona. There are more than 500 abandoned uranium minds on the sprawling Indian reservation that cuts across northeastern Arizona as well as parts of Utah and New Mexico.

From 1944 to 1986, mining companies extracted more than 30 million tons of uranium from mines on Navajo land. The mining was fueled by the U.S. Cold War with the former Soviet Union and the super powers’s nuclear arms race.

Uranium is key to nuclear weapons and northern Arizona, in particular the Navajo Nation, had deep deposits. Private companies often hired Navajos to work at the mines.

Desperation and death beneath South Africa’s City of Gold – by Ed Cropley (Reuters U.S. – September 13, 2016)

September 13, 2016

http://www.reuters.com/

JOHANNESBURG – When he lost his job as a Johannesburg gardener a month ago, 25-year-old Sibangani Tsikwe did what millions of men have done before him: seek their fortune deep underground in the gold mines that help to define South Africa.

The decision has probably cost him his life.

Equipped with little more than a head-torch, pick-axe and nerves of steel, Tsikwe and a group of fellow Zimbabweans descended into the bowels of the earth on Sept. 5 via a derelict shaft at Johannesburg’s Langlaagte gold mine. He has not been seen since.

In the annals of South African mining, Langlaagte looms large as the farm where prospectors first stumbled upon gold in 1886, a discovery that would open up the richest veins of gold-bearing rock mankind has discovered.

Deeper gets deadly for workers in aging South Africa gold mines – by Kevin Crowley (Mineweb.com/Bloomberg – September 9, 2016)

September 9, 2016

http://www.mineweb.com/

Fatalities up 20%, first rise since 2008, most in two decades.

Finding minerals in South Africa after more than a century of digging often means going deeper than ever before. Now, it’s also becoming deadlier.

In a country that remains one of the biggest producers of gold, platinum and diamonds, 60 mining deaths this year through August was 20% higher than the same period in 2015, according to the Chamber of Mines, an industry group. The annual tally is heading for its first increase in nine years and the biggest in at least two decades, escalating concerns by both workers and mining executives.

Many of those killed laboured in the searing heat of gold mines that can be more than two miles under ground and traditionally are among the most deadly in South Africa. Various causes have been cited, from falling rock to miners failing to obey safety protocols. But in all cases, that means losses for producers when they are forced to shut mines until government investigations are completed.

South African mine deaths rise after years of improving safety – by Ed Stoddard and Sisipho Skweyiya (Reuters – August 31, 2016)

August 31, 2016

http://news.trust.org/

PHUTHADITJHABA, South Africa, Aug 31 (Reuters) – Pakiso Matsemela recalls the day he lost the use of his legs, joining the long casualty list of a South African mining industry whose accident rate is again climbing after years of improvement.

“I heard a bang and suddenly I was hit in the back by a rock. It felt like a rush of heat,” the 63-year-old told Reuters, recounting the accident that shattered his spine at the Northam Platinum mine.

That was in May, 2009 and – while of no consolation to the paralysed Matsemela – South Africa’s mines were at the time gradually getting to grips with their appalling safety record.

Second worker this month injured at Agrium’s Vanscoy potash mine – by Alex MacPherson (Saskatoon StarPhoenix – August 23, 2016)

August 24, 2016

http://thestarphoenix.com/

A miner was airlifted to hospital in Saskatoon Sunday morning after suffering major injuries in the second underground accident this month at Agrium Inc.’s Vanscoy potash mine.

“He had serious injuries and had some surgery (Sunday) and he’s recovering from that surgery right now,” said Todd Steen, general manager of the mine, which is located about 30 kilometres southwest of Saskatoon.

Details about what caused the accident will be available when an investigation is complete, but it is “not related” to the Aug. 8 incident that led to the death of 29-year-old Chad Wiklun, Steen said. “It’s very unfortunate that we had another incident here, and we want to make sure we don’t have any more, and we want to make sure we get to the bottom of these.”