Editorial Mine deaths must be cut

A miner was crushed to death in a rock fall at one of Rio Algom’s uranium operations this week, the ninth fatality suffered in Ontario mines this year. This is a very serious situation, completely unacceptable, and one that must be addressed immediately — and with vigor.

Ironically, this latest fatality occurred just when Ontario’s labor minister, William Wrye, was announcing stiff new regulatory measures designed to provide for still greater protection for the health and safety of Ontario miners. These include new provisions relating to ground control that are described as “the most rigorous and advanced in Canada.”

The new measures, all but one of which takes effect immediately, involve such key points as mine design, training, communication, overhead protective devices for vehicles and underground lighting.

“Although there have been some tragic recent reminders of the potential danger inherent in mining, both health and safety in the workplace have improved greatly in recent years,” Mr Wrye points out. Indeed this is so, particularly in Ontario despite its recent unhappy turn in events.

Many of Ontario’s mines are growing old and getting deeper. This is unquestionably part of the probem, for it frequently results in rock control difficulties that go hand in hand with pressure buildups which all too frequently result in rock bursts, one of the most serious problems facing our older mines.

With this in mind the new regulations will require operators to assess the ground stability of a mine on an annual basis and prior to any significant alteration. This written assessment, including a copy of the mine design, description of geological features and the outline of all existing and planned excavations must be made available to both the mine’s health and safety committee, and to government engineers.

While we have not seen these new regulations in detail, we would hope they would require the complete interchange of mining procedures between neighboring operations, especially those pertaining to the leaving or removal of pillars. Surely we learned some costly lessons from Kirkland Lake where, in its heyday, there were seven adjoining producing gold mines, all extracting ore from the same common vein system. Yet those mines operated with a very minimum of interchange of crucial data, adding immeasurably to the rock burst problems in that camp which became so severe and costly it resulted in premature closings.

Again at Red Lake, where Campbell and Dickenson are mining what is essentially a common zone, boundary pillars containing excellent ore have been left and probably will never be recovered due to rock pressures.

We would not want to see these kind of situations repeated at, say, Hemlo.