South African Gold Mine Accident.

[John]

Just picked this up and copied it from the BBC site.



More than 3,000 stuck in SA mine
Map
More than 3,000 workers are trapped deep underground in a South African gold mine, officials have said.

A pipe broke, severing power cables to the lift and trapping workers at the bottom of a 2.2km (1.4 mile) shaft.

Rescuers are planning to use an adjacent shaft to lift them out, a spokeswoman for the mine's owner, Harmony Gold Mining, said.

The accident happened at about 1000 (0800 GMT), some 80km (50 miles) west of Johannesburg.

The spokeswoman, Amelia Soares, said no-one was injured and that the bottom of the shaft where the miners are trapped is well ventilated.

She said rescuers were in contact with the miners, and planned to begin lifting them very soon.

However, only 75 miners could be lifted out at a time through the adjacent ventilation shaft, she added.

'Poor safety record'

A spokesman for South Africa's National Union of Mineworkers said they were extremely concerned for the miners' safety.

"We are, you know, losing hope because... from six o'clock in the morning up until now the miners might actually be suffocating," Lesiba Seshoka told the BBC.

"Because of the fact that there's been a fall of ground so anything can actually happen, you know. We are just crossing our fingers that something good will come out of this."

The Elandsrand mine is in the Withingyersrand Basin, which holds the world's largest gold deposit.

The mines there are among the deepest in the world.

Mr Seshoka said South Africa's mines have a poor safety record.

[limey]

Clearly, Mr Seshoka had some bad information!

The situation as I read it was that there was only damage in the shaft - apparantly due to a compressed air line bursting, so it was out of commission. Nobody was hurt, there was no roof fall, and ventilation was normal. They were (slowly) getting the miners out by the emergency shaft but those still underground had food, water and medical help if needed.

I suspect that getting them out is just a very slow process!

[dazbt]

limey said:

Clearly, Mr Seshoka had some bad information!

The situation as I read it was that there was only damage in the shaft - apparantly due to a compressed air line bursting, so it was out of commission. Nobody was hurt, there was no roof fall, and ventilation was normal. They were (slowly) getting the miners out by the emergency shaft but those still underground had food, water and medical help if needed.

I suspect that getting them out is just a very slow process!

I'm sure it wasn't a very pleasant experience being stuck in the pit bottom all that time, as one "rescued" lady miner stated, "The worst part was the smell", it never even looked like being a fatal disaster in any way. I reckon that the NUM spokesperson was well wayward of the mark in making that sort of comment, I'm sure it helped the miner's families waiting a lot easier ... 'the plank'.
Are we sure Seshoka is a Mr by the way?

[Sam from Kent]

Back in the early 70's we had heavy snow in Kent and the 3 Kent collieries were connected up on a "ring" main, but a fault occurred cutting the power to all three collieries and we were trapped underground for about 20 hours.After this incident generators were provided to allow the brakes on the Koepe winder to be released to allow for gravity winding

[John]

During my first year at Boulby, mid winter too, the No2 winder decided to "give up the ghost" while winding the nightshift up. It left them stranded mid shaft.
No2 shaft was the downcast shaft back then too!! Bitterly cold winters too on the edge of the North Yorks National Park, so the poor buggers were frozen.
After a couple of hours of fault finding, it was thought one or more of the windings had gone short circuit. This was a 3500HP DC motor controlled by thyristors with masses of "firing" circuits to control speed.
After a couple of hours, management was getting worried about the men still in the shaft and requested our boss plus the mechanical engineer if there was anyway they could ease the brakes off and lower them to pit bottom. Any longer they thought, would lead to many men having to be transported to hospital with hypothermia.
With some messing around with hydraulic circuits, the brakes were eased off enough to allow the drum to start rotating and allowing the men to be lowered to pit bottom.
No1 shaft was readied for winding them up with blankets and hot drinks waiting for them in pit bottom.
Luckily, although they were all bitterly cold, no one had hypothermia, and after being checked over by our nursing team and the companies Doctor, all were allowed home.
Boulby Mine was fed with one main feeder, so just in case, we had a standby generator that was capable of running the No2 winder in emergency, albiet pretty slowly, but better than nothing in a major power outage.

The fault was found to be a printed circuit board failure, we didn't have a spare and one had to be made up and flown to the pit when completed.