The NSW Department of Primary Industries yesterday issued a safety bulletin alerting mines to the raft of accidents occurring across the industry where mine workers were injured after being struck or crushed by mobile plant or machinery. Three of the four accidents highlighted resulted in serious injuries.

In an incident at an underground coal mine three labour hire contractors were assisting with a longwall move. The workers had moved to the surface to collect monorail sleds for the move.

According to the DPI, two contractors were helping to connect two modules in preparation for taking underground, while the other was driving an underground loader.

One contractor stood on the deck above the front coupling of one of the modules. While the module was being pushed by the loader the contractor reached down, placing a leg on the ground down one side of the coupling, and lifted the coupling and lug to a horizontal position.

The second module was pushed past the coupling join point and the contractor’s legs were caught between the two couplings, resulting in compound fractures of his lower right leg.

In a separate incident, a mine worker received serious crush injuries when a remote-controlled continuous miner was being reversed from a heading.

According to DPI, the injured person and other workers had finished mining the heading and were moving the remote control miner to another location.

Two men were in front of the CM monitoring the machine’s electrical cable.

“The miner driver was at the rear of the machine, reversing the CM with the remote control, when it appears that he stumbled and inadvertently operated one of the controls. At the same time the mineworker entered the no-go zone of the machine, resulting in him being crushed,” DPI stated.

The worker was crushed between the cutting head of the machine and the rib of the underground coal mine heading.

The other incidents cited by DPI included: a contractor at a coal preparation plant received severe bruising to the lower back when crushed between a sump handrail and another fixed steel structure; and an employee of a metalliferous open cut mine received multiple skull fractures when struck by a tree log that was being levered out of a stockpile of felled scrub timber by a backhoe bucket.

All four incidents are currently under investigation by the DPI.

DPI said common issues of concern with the incidents included:

• Failure of risk assessments to identify and control risky behaviour of persons in and around machinery;
• Failure of plant operators and supervisors to identify and control risky behaviour of persons in and around machinery;
• Failure to establish and maintain no-go zones, control zones and barricading around machinery;
• Failure to maintain line of sight, and communications with persons working around mobile plant and machinery.

DPI recommended operations should examine the working relationship between persons and machinery and primary hazards of machinery, as well as installing barriers, signs and markings to identify hazardous work areas, no-go and control zones.

“Persons should stay outside the mobile plant operating radius and turning circle,” DPI said.

Mine management should also ensure risk assessments and safe working procedures for operation and maintenance of mobile plant are adequate.

It also said adequate training and information should be provided regularly to mobile plant operators and those working around mobile machinery.