Placer Dome, employee face charges over mine fatality

Vancouver-based Placer Dome (TSE) and a company employee are facing charges relating to a fatal accident that occurred last February at the Campbell Red Lake gold mine at Balmertown, Ont. The charges follow an investigation by the Ontario Ministry of Labour into the death of a miner who fell while climbing a ladder in a manway leading from the mine’s 16th level. As a result of the fatality, the fifth to have occurred at Campbell since 1982, management will conduct a review of how safety procedures are implemented at Placer Dome’s largest Canadian gold mine.

Although a preliminary hearing into the incident was scheduled to be held in Red Lake, Feb. 21, mine manager Tim Mann said the company won’t enter a plea until a trial commences later this year.

Placer Dome Inc., Campbell mine and Terry MacKinnon, who was mine superindendent when the accident occurred, have each been charged with violations under Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act.

Marcel Caron, an area engineer at the Ministry of Labour in Thunder Bay, Ont., declined to say why the charges were laid or why the investigation had taken so long.

However, Irving Andre, counsel at the Labour Ministry’s legal services branch in Toronto, said his department believes the company was remiss with regard to the statutory duties imposed upon it under the law.

We believe measures could have been taken to prevent the accident and those measures weren’t taken,” he told The Northern Miner.

Under the law, Health and Safety branch officials have up to one year from the date of an accident to lay charges. Andre said the legal branch had taken almost the full amount of time allotted to it to ensure “it was laying charges against someone where a case could be made.”

The charges carry a maximum penalty of a year in jail and fines of up to $500,000.

The victim was a member of a backfill crew who entered an area that was deficient in oxygen. After succumbing to a lack of oxygen while climbing a manway ladder, the man fell off the ladder and suffered massive head injuries.

As part of new safety initiatives, which were introduced at the mine last year, work crews responsible for backfill and timber work must report to a designated mine captain.

Mann says backfilling of mined out areas is an important part of an operation which last year produced 254,998 oz. gold at an average grade of 0.62 oz. gold per ton. Having operated since 1949, Campbell mine workings extend down to the 4,000 ft. level.

“Initiatives have also been taken to improve the safety awareness of all the people who work at Campbell,” said Mann who described the number of recent fatalities there as “unacceptable.”