While J Davitt McAteer’s preliminary report to West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin III released in July did not come up with a definitive cause for the mine explosion that led to the death of 12 miners at the beginning of the year, it strongly points the finger at lightning as being the likely culprit.

At 6.26am on January 2, according to the report, US lightning monitoring service Vaisala reported two lightning strikes – one of exceptional power – within an 8km radius of the Sago portal. “The explosion in the mine appears to have occurred at virtually the exact same moment,” the report says.

There have been numerous lightning-related incidents on Australian mines. These include:

An injury to a haul truck driver at Robe River Iron Associate’s Pannawonica operations;

An injury to a worker at WMC’s Mt Keith Nickel operations;

A pre-detonation of explosives at Normandy’s Golden Grove operations; and

A dump truck tyre fire at Hamersley Iron’s Yandi site.

Lightning and Surge Technologies director Grant Kirkby said mining companies needed to put in place a policy to deal with lightning risk.

Kirkby has been involved in investigations into numerous lightning-related incidents, including those mentioned above, and he can tell some hair-raising tales about near misses on work sites and the devastating effect that lightning can have.

One of these tales is about the Golden Grove incident. Kirkby said the workers had charged a face and were walking back to detonate it, hearing the rumbles of an approaching thunderstorm as they did so. What they had not realised, perhaps, was that lightning can strike well ahead of an approaching storm.

In this case that is exactly what happened. Lightning struck the ground and the charge it released into the ground was enough to trigger the explosives the workers had just been working on. Fortunately, the workers were far enough away from the detonation and were not injured.

Alas, not all of Kirkby’s lightning tales have such happy endings. He has been called on to investigate some incidents where workers have been killed by lightning strikes and has some advice to help keep workplaces safe from such incidents.

He said one thing miners could do was to put in systems that warned workers when lightning was approaching. Kirkby’s company sells a range of lightning detectors, including two hand-held devices, Skyscan and Spectrum Thunderbolt.

Of the two, it appears Thunderbolt is proving more popular because of its greater features, including the ability to determine the distance of detected lightning strikes, an approximate approach speed of a thunderstorm and when it is due to hit.

The Australian Standard AS1768 recommends companies employ the 30:30 rule in the absence of approved lightning detectors. Under that rule, people working outdoors should seek shelter when the time between the lightning flash and the thunderclap is 30 seconds. The second part of the 30:30 rule relates to waiting 30 minutes from the last thunderclap before going back outdoors. That standard is currently under review.

Kirkby said this could be the hardest part of the rule – determining which thunderclap is the last one.

“You can get to 29 minutes and then there’s another thunderclap,” he said.

Thunderbolt can help run that countdown for companies.

Besides its detectors, Lightning and Surge Technologies provides advice and equipment to help companies set up appropriate lightning protection systems and policies to keep workers and the public safe.

Kirkby said lightning safety was all about recognising the risk and then removing oneself from the risk.

His advice when a thunderstorm is approaching is to immediately seek safe shelter and tell the people who are exposed to the elements to do the same and wait for the storm to pass.

Safe shelter includes a substantial building and a totally enclosed metal-bodied vehicle such as a car or truck with a metallic roof (but avoid contact with metallic parts).

Kirkby said workers should not seek shelter under trees, particularly an isolated tree or in small sheds, pagodas and walkways with low, unearthed metallic roofs supported on wooden or other electrically insulating materials.