Eemergency exercises are conducted in Queensland every year to test a mine’s emergency preparedness systems as well as the readiness of other services, such as mines rescue and assistance from other mines,to respond.

A carefully planned emergency scenario is given to a chosen mine on a specific day and mine management have to treat the situation as if it were real.

A team of assessors made up of the mine's inspectorate, CFMEU industry safety representatives, gas experts and others, observe the situation as it unfolds. Findings are communicated back to industry by way of reports and presentations.

The Level One 2004 emergency exercise at Xstrata Coal’s Oaky Creek No 1 mine last week was described as very successful by lead assessor and Queensland Department of Natural Resources and Mines senior inspector of mines David Reece.

The scenario coupled a frictional ignition event in a development section with several fatalities. A methane explosion created a coal dust explosion, causing extensive damage to ventilation structures.

Mine management had to work out how to get underground workers out of the mine, how to deal with spot fires in the area and what to do about the interruption to ventilation circuits.

As the exercise launched a surface team was assembled to manage the crisis using the new ICS model. In the past a mine’s emergency response team, or incident management team (IMT), has worked through the problem in one room, almost in isolation. It was observed that this structure slowed communication and hampered the decision making processes.

The new ICS system is used by fire fighting organisations and was briefly outlined to the mine before the exercise. ICS has a four part structure made up of planning, operational, logistics and incident controller teams, all functioning in concert but independently with set goals. The people manning these teams mirror their existing mine functions, for example technical services people are in the planning team. Tasks are divided and delegated with the incident controller overseeing the process.

The scenairo was apart from the initial fatalities, 40 other workers were working underground at the time and all successfully evacuated the mine.

The exercise required them to enter the irrespirable zone and dust cloud near the explosion site.

To make the simulation realistic the underground assessor teams showed the workers photographs of real explosion situations. On reaching the surface this critical information was passed to surface teams to assess the situation.

Another touch of realism was achieved with escaping workers required to don actual self rescuers, some out of date real rescuers, but a large number of in date units.

The information brought to the surface was critical, given information from the mine’s gas monitoring systems was incomplete due to equipment damage. The emergency teams were able to cross-reference this data with other data sets to identify the location of fires and extent of damage.

Using interpretation and inference from wider monitoring points allowed surface teams to reach the decision to re-enter and recover the mine without putting rescue teams at risk.

Halfway through the exercise it was identified that critical information was being lost in the surface debriefing. The mine immediately appointed a person to analyse and examine debriefing information to ensure it got to the four groups efficiently.

The crucial role of the ventilation officer in the analysis of gas monitoring was examined. One identified problem was this area was usually under-resourced and attempting to churn through mounds of data slowed the decision making down.

“This is one area we are yet to get to grips with - how we resource these guys better,” Reece said.

According to Reece the exercise went very well. The ICS process was commended by everyone as being a vast improvement on previous structures. It allowed communication lines between different teams to remain open without having to be waylaid by going through a centralised IMT.

Mine manager Les Marlborough said the experience had proven an invaluable learning experience for the mine. Marlborough has been through a previous Level One exercise before as a mine manager, using the IMT process. He said the ICS process was a vast improvement on IMT, which tended to get bogged down with too much information.

“At the mine we did a GAP analysis of all previous Level One exercises. We had heard about the ICS system and I saw a presentation on it in Dysart. It was close to what we were looking for so about five weeks before the exercise we decided we would try and use it," Marlborough said.

The inspectorate and the Level 1 assessment team supported our decision and changed their assessment tools to suit.

“We accepted the fact no-one had gone through any formal training in ICS but we wanted to see how the ICS system could be altered for the coal industry.

“Some overlap arose because of this – people in operations were looking at gas trends, for example, instead of passing them on – but this would be resolved with formal ICS training.”

He said the ICS process allowed management to delegate tasks and tackle issues differently and in parallel. Ongoing data collection was able to continue while planning activities proceeded. An important observation was the incident controller did not go into overload with too much information.

It was Marlborough who decided workers would wear real rescuers because underground workers never really get to find out what wearing one feels like in a real situation.

He said feedback from workers confirmed the rescuers were more difficult to put on than they had previously thought; that they offered more breathing resistance than had been experienced using training rescuers; and that wearing smoke goggles changed people’s perspective while walking out.

Workers were also able to travel far greater distances on foot with 30 minute belt worn units than they thought possible, some workers walking almost 3km wearing 30 minute belt worn units.

“We had a suggestion that during training we might look to introduce donning these self rescuers in the dark and putting one onto someone who is injured,” he said.

Marlborough also commended the response of the neighbouring Oaky North, Southern, Grasstree and Central mines which sent rescue team members to the site within a couple of hours.

Queensland Mines Rescue Service state manager Wayne Hartley said the exercise had been an enormous learning experience and was a big step forward in remodelling the way emergencies were handled.

QMRS is currently consulting with an industry based shareholder group to introduce the ICS concept – with appropriate modifications – to coal mines.

Hartley said the QMRS was developing a training course for the coal industry which would kick off by March/April next year. Once finetuned for use in coal mines, this course would also be submitted for accreditation to allow it to be mapped against the Black Coal Competencies.

“The mine’s response was very professional and they took this on with a focused approach. The exercise was a successful evacuation and re-entry to recover the mine,” Reece said.