CSW
31-01-2006, 02:34
Seventy-two Canadian potash miners Monday walked away from an underground fire and toxic smoke on Monday after being locked down overnight in airtight chambers packed with enough oxygen, food and water for several days.
The company said the textbook case of safe underground mining was due to those chambers, extensive training of rescue workers and support from the rural community.
"It really looks like a textbook recovery to me" said Davitt McAteer, head of the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration under former President Clinton.
McAteer is leading the investigation into the deaths of 12 miners who died earlier this month at the Sago coal mine in West Virginia.
McAteer, in a telephone interview, said the safety chambers in the Mosaic mine in Canada's central Saskatchewan province were key to the miners' survival.
"I think that the question of the existence of the chamber that provided oxygen, food and protection is fundamentally important in any kind of a mine," he said. He acknowledged, however, that potash mines are not nearly as dangerous as those for coal _ where an initial explosion can provoke a secondary one 10 times as strong.
There are no such chambers in U.S. mines, he said, because back in the late 1970s, the U.S. government determined there was no material strong enough to withstand the secondary explosion. Since then, he said, NASA and the Defense Department have created stronger materials.
"If you can build a black box to withstand an explosion in an airplane, why can't you build one to escape an explosion in a mine?" he asked.
The fire first broke out early Sunday in the central Canadian mine's polyethylene piping, filling the tunnels with toxic smoke and forcing the 72 miners to seek refuge in the sealed chambers until the fire was out and the air safe to breathe.
Thirty-two miners were brought to the surface early Monday; 35 emerged a few hours later. The last to be rescued Monday were five workers holed up in the farthest reaches of the mine.
Shannon Reitenbach, an industrial mechanic at the mine, said employees hold routine fire drills and are trained to keep in constant contact with people on the surface and study maps of the labyrinth of mine shafts.
Mosaic CEO Fritz Corrigan pledged a thorough investigation into the cause of the fire.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/01/30/ap/world/mainD8FF9JV88.shtml
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Bravo to a job well done by the Canadians, now I only wish our own mines had such safety measures.
The company said the textbook case of safe underground mining was due to those chambers, extensive training of rescue workers and support from the rural community.
"It really looks like a textbook recovery to me" said Davitt McAteer, head of the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration under former President Clinton.
McAteer is leading the investigation into the deaths of 12 miners who died earlier this month at the Sago coal mine in West Virginia.
McAteer, in a telephone interview, said the safety chambers in the Mosaic mine in Canada's central Saskatchewan province were key to the miners' survival.
"I think that the question of the existence of the chamber that provided oxygen, food and protection is fundamentally important in any kind of a mine," he said. He acknowledged, however, that potash mines are not nearly as dangerous as those for coal _ where an initial explosion can provoke a secondary one 10 times as strong.
There are no such chambers in U.S. mines, he said, because back in the late 1970s, the U.S. government determined there was no material strong enough to withstand the secondary explosion. Since then, he said, NASA and the Defense Department have created stronger materials.
"If you can build a black box to withstand an explosion in an airplane, why can't you build one to escape an explosion in a mine?" he asked.
The fire first broke out early Sunday in the central Canadian mine's polyethylene piping, filling the tunnels with toxic smoke and forcing the 72 miners to seek refuge in the sealed chambers until the fire was out and the air safe to breathe.
Thirty-two miners were brought to the surface early Monday; 35 emerged a few hours later. The last to be rescued Monday were five workers holed up in the farthest reaches of the mine.
Shannon Reitenbach, an industrial mechanic at the mine, said employees hold routine fire drills and are trained to keep in constant contact with people on the surface and study maps of the labyrinth of mine shafts.
Mosaic CEO Fritz Corrigan pledged a thorough investigation into the cause of the fire.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/01/30/ap/world/mainD8FF9JV88.shtml
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Bravo to a job well done by the Canadians, now I only wish our own mines had such safety measures.