Sudden rockfall is a leading killer in the country’s hazardous mines. Are there now ways to eliminate the threat? (via undarkmag)
Thabang Ditibane spread his arms wide to describe the size of the stone that killed a fellow South African miner four years ago.
Experts say South Africa’s mines are not nearly as dangerous as they once were. Since the early 1990s, intensified regulatory scrutiny, labor activism, and investor pressure have driven the sector to mine more safely. “Zero Harm” is now the stated goal of the industry, labor organizations, and the government.
As the name suggests, a fall of ground is a terrifying prospect: The rock overhead suddenly collapses. Mining-related disturbances, gravity, and natural geological weaknesses can all play a role. During apartheid—which subjected an overwhelmingly Black, migrant labor force to ruthless exploitation—miners often worked with scant safety protections. In 1986, 800 South African miners died at work. Since the end of apartheid in 1994, South Africa’s mines have gradually become safer. Fatalities reached a record low of 51 in 2019—still almost one per week on average. During the Covid-19 pandemic, those figures rose again, although to nowhere near their apartheid levels.
In order to head off FOGs, mines install safety netting and bolting in the roof of underground mines. Once used selectively, the practice that has become widespread in the past decade. The premise is basic: The mesh catches loose rocks as they fall. In 2013, a wall gave way at the Bingham Canyon Mine, an open-pit copper mine outside Salt Lake City, Utah. The landslide spewed 165 million tons of rock—enough, according to a team of geologists whothe incident, to cover New York City’s Central Park 65-feet deep in debris. The event, they wrote, was “likely the largest non-volcanic landslide in North American history.”
“The idea came from the success achieved in open-pit mines using radar technology.” said Riaan Carstens, lead geotechnical engineer at Anglo. “Where it was deployed, used effectively, they pretty much eliminated fatalities from slope failure.
“This is the only way that you can forecast if a rock is going to collapse,” he said. “You need a precision that is sub-millimeter.”
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