In May 2006 four people died at the Sullivan Mine, British Columbia. They suffocated in a water-sampling shed. There was not enough oxygen in the shed to keep them alive, and they died, one after the other. It was a terrible accident–much of it due to barometric pressure variations.
In the Sixth Australian Workshop on Acid and Metalliferous Drainage, held in mid-April 2008, M. Phillips, D. Hockley, and B. Dawson set out guidelines in their paper Sullivan Mine Fatalities Incident: Preliminary Technical Investigations and Findings to prevent a repeat of this type of accident.
At this link, I make bold to repeat their guidelines in full. Because this is a blog, I summarize the guidelines simply by warning you that if at your mine there is a waste rock dump, a tailings impoundment, or an ore storage pile, you better watch out: oxygen-deprived air could come from these dumps or piles, accumulate in a building or topographic low spot, and suffocate your workers.
This is more likely to occur if there are sulfide minerals or other minerals that could create carbon dioxide in the rock or tailings. Other factors that may cause this deadly situation include:
- Differential air temperatures and sharp drops in barometric pressure that can drive stale air from the dump.
- Covers, drains, pipes, coarse rock zones, or other components that may collect and focus stale air from the dump.
- Anything that prevents the ready mixing of stale air and fresh air,including heavy vegetation, local topographic depressions, walls, berms, and the like.
We applaud the courage of the mine, the mining company, and those writing this paper in making these guidelines available. We trust you can act on them.
PS. You can get some more official information at the B.C. Government Media Room, where there are old reports–strangely not the paper I write about here or even a series of Powerpoint slides from the 14th Annual British Columbia MEND ML/ARD Workshop held in November 2007. The powerpoints presentations are available on a CD issued in March 2008.
