Accident Reports.

[John]

I wonder how many here have had to investigate an accident and write a report up?? I'll bet Bill has written a few. (Ragger)

Anyway, I was leading hand electrician on "dogwatch" (nights) at Angus Place Colliery, I'd set my staff up with their work loads for the night and we had been underground around an hour or so. I was up the longwall with one of my younger electricians sorting some problems out when I got a phone call from a Deputy in another district, "one of your electricians has had an accident he said, get your butt down here right now!"
All sorts go through your mind when you get messages like that, I'd been told he'd been sent to the surface for first aid and treatment.
My next task was to see if I could do anything and set the wheels in motion if I could. I called outside and the last shifts undermanager was still in his office, so I asked how my young bloke was, we sent him to hospital was the reply, right I said, notify the Manager and the Electrical Engineer, we have to go by the book! Already done said he. OK, I'm off down to the accident site to make my investigation for my report.

Just a little info, the young electrician was doing a PPM on the secondary side of a transformer, 11kv/1.1kv and the associated outgoing cables, fairly straight forward job.

I arrived on site about half an hour later and the district Deputy met me on site, he'd already posted the "crossed sticks" meaning NO ENTRY! and permitted me to enter the stub heading the transformer was installed in.
Nothings been touched?? I asked, "No" he said, "I was waiting for you"
He gave me a run down on the lead up to the accident and left me to my investigation.
The doors on the transformer secondary control panel were open, flash guards were removed and the transformer was tripped on "earth leakage" indication.
I'm not in a postion to come to conclusions, but to get the facts, I found the lads megger and leads which were scortched, again as it was a reportable accident, I left everything as was for the electrical inspector of mines.
I did make a phone call to the Under manager and said there's no way we can cover this up, he agreed as the lad was at the hospital with burns to his hands, arms and face.
It looked to me as he had neglected, for what ever reason we don't know, to isolate power, clipped one side of his megger to earth, and was about to clip the other side to a live phase when it flashed over!
Next morning the Engineer asked me to come up to his office and make a full report for the Inspector who was due later that morning, took me a couple of hours to get all the facts down.

There were mitigating circumstances, the Inspector after he'd done his inspection of the area and was with my boss, wanted the lad fired for breaking the rules, both Coal Mines Act and the Engineers rules. My Engineer put a good case forward why he shouldn't be fired and the Inspector was requested to drop any and all charges, which he eventually did on compassionate grounds. I won't go into those, as they were personal family matters.

Ordinarily, this would have been a court case, working on live conductors underground, which was absolutely forbidden.

[Sam from Kent]

I was the Section 123 inspector for Tilmanstone and I had to investigate 2 fatalities. I remember one happened on night shift and I had to return to the surface to bring a Doctor underground, who had never been underground before to certify death

[erichall]

Think yourselves lucky, lads. After a fair spell as undermanager in 3 pits in N.Derbyshire, I was transferred to High Moor, a drift mine. Shortly after my move, we had a fatality at a face entry, where a worker had been chocking up the fragile sides over the face entry bars, when some side fell over onto him. Being the nearest senior official, I was the first onsite, and automatically started Mouth to Mouth resusitation, whilst arranging for the overman to put everything else in motion. It was not a very pleasant job, on reflection, since Lol had the worst set of teeth in the mine, but one which, as anyone would, I undertook to attempt to save a workmate. Unfortunately, we were unable to save him, and the whole process of Accident Reporting was put into being. I even had to testify at the inquest and was questioned in the witness box regarding the occurrence (nothing to do with me, incidentally) and my actions - were they done exactly, correctly, could I have done anything more to save the life and more. After leaving the witness box I got the feeling that the coroner and some of the questioners from the NUM had thought I had killed the chap. It's a lonely place, believe me.
It was decided after the fatality that given the circumstances (it was the first fatality at that pit) added to the fact that we were just starting to experiment with Free-Steered Vehicles in a big way, that a Safety Engineer was required to oversee the entire though at that time small safety department, to oversee the overall safety conditions at the mine, and to liase with the various Area Depatmnets, HMI's, and all concerned with the development of the FSV's.
On the saftey side, it became my responsibility to visit all potentially reportable accident sites, often involving the pit NUM safety inspector, before any site was disturbed.
It also became my responsibility to asses all accident reports, and injuries to decide whether an accident was 'reportable' or not. Some accidents or dangerous occurrences were, of necessity, reportable top HMI, but all had to be assessed. The one I always found most annoying was the relatively common accident of injuries to the wrist. Breakage of the wrist joint did NOT count as a reportable accident, except wher it involved breakage of the 'scaphoid bone' - the smallest bone in the wrist/body and the worst to confirm. Waiting for, and constantly trying to get confirmation from, the hospital could be so frustrating unless you had an amenable HMI, who would allow you to clear the site to continue working.
When once asked by a higher official what I considered the job description of a Safety Engineer was, my reply shocked him. 'Simple, ' I said, 'I'm the rear gunner for the Manager!' I considered it my job to protect the manager's back from fall-out to the M&Q Act.
With regard to the question raised on another page regarding the Knockshinnock Disaster and the use of 'unapproved' breathing apparatus, I don't know of any particular section of the act that 'allows a Manager to contravene the Act' but I would consider that any Manager would weigh up the pro's and con's and, time permitting, consult his HMI prior to doing so, but I have known Officials to deliberately contravene the Act if they were sure that a) It was an action to save life, and b) to ensure the safety of the mine and it's workers, and then argue this out with the Inspectorate at a later date. Don't forget that all HMI's had themselves been Managers, or in the case of the specialist engineers, Electrical or Mechanical Engineers of mines, and were essentially practical men.

[John]

Thankfully, I've never been involved in a fatality, other than being at work when one has occurred. Everyone is sombre reflecting on the loss of a workmate in total silence. The only time I've ridden a shaft with a full cage in deadly silence.

I was on Christmas leave one year, the wife and I were working on our fixer upper house instead of going away for our usual three weeks, the radio was on and the late afternoon news stopped me dead, one of my workmates had been killed in a freak accident at work just a couple of hours earlier.

He was a shift electrical engineer, a few years younger than me. Circumstances were he was supervising the maintenance of the 11Kv "trucks" in the winchroom, which were mounted on a steel deck about five feet off the winchroom floor alongside the drift winch switchgear.

An electrician, who was the engineers Brother In Law, and he had changed the oil in the OCB and were in the process of pushing the truck back into the rack, it made contact with the back sockets and went up in flames covering the engineer who was at ground level with scolding hot liquid. The large roller door and windows were blown out by the blast.

Outcome was, all oil to be tested by our Elec Engineer in Charge, he implemented this himself and purchased off his own back the equipment to carry this out, a test certificate signed by him on every drum of transformer oil.
ALL transformer oild drums to be colour coded, which was taken up nationally, and from what I can make out is now international.

The "transformer oil" they used was marked as such, confirmed by the storeman BUT was actually cleaning solvent, made up of over 70% water.

From what my boss told us when we were being lectured after the Xmas break, they were suspicious of the drums contents, that to me would make me refuse to use the liquid and mark it clearly as such with my report.
You could say I would be working on "hindsight", but not, as I have always erred on the side of safety.
My attitude has always been been, "if in doubt, toss it out"