Miners Rescued After Pit Fire

Sydney Morning Herald

Thursday October 25, 2007

Ben Cubby

FIFTY-FOUR goldminers, trapped underground after a fire in the Kanowna Belle mine near Kalgoorlie in Western Australia, were safely brought to the surface last night after an eight-hour rescue operation.

In ones and twos, the trapped miners were brought back to the surface by their mates, who had converged on the site after an alert flashed out saying a heavy truck had caught fire on an underground road, about a kilometre from the mine's main entry and exit. No one was injured.

The fire, in the engine bay of the 755 caterpillar truck, was extinguished soon after it started at 9.15am, but the 54 workers had taken shelter in various sealed refuge chambers, located throughout the seven-kilometre network of tunnels.

Some had taken shelter near the surface, others were almost a kilometre underground when the alarm sounded.

"It's always a relief when you know people are safe," said Celina Watt, a spokeswoman for Barrick Australia Pacific, the company which owns the mine. "There's a lot of people on site, a lot of them are mates, with the rescuers coming in from other mines."

The evacuation took all day because the miners had rehearsed safety procedures, which meant that each area of the goldmine was checked for further hazards before the miners left their refuge stations, Ms Watt said.

A spokesman for Western Australia's Department of Consumer and Employment Protection said there were no injuries because the safety system was activated as soon as the fire began.

The rescue team was last night examining the fire's cause. The burned truck will most likely be towed back to the surface today.

"Depending on the investigation, we hope to have [the mine] back up and running within 24 hours," Ms Watt said.

Kanowna Belle was started as an open-air mine in 1993, and excavation began on the tunnel system several years later.

According to public information about the mine, the upper levels have now been mined out, sending workers deeper underground. The mine has now been excavated to 1020 metres beneath the desert, and Barrick Australia Pacific is considering going deeper to find more gold.

© 2007 Sydney Morning Herald

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