Risk Management
Mining’s criminal curveball WHILE THEY MAKE UP A SMALL PROPORTION OF MINE SITE INCIDENTS, DELIBERATELY LIT FIRES ARE JUST AS DEADLY AS ANY OTHER SAFETY INCURSION AND MUST BE MET WITH THE SAME URGENCY.
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ining fires predominantly occur haphazardly, with flammable liquids igniting with a fuel source to spark combustion. Fires can be created from fixed and mobile plant malfunctions or maintenance tasks that involve hot work and hot metal or slag kindling with a source. Conveyor belts can also cause fires, whereby excessive friction on pulleys and rollers can create an ignition. There’s also the potential for fires to be deliberately lit. An arsonist caused the 2014 Hazelwood coal mine fire in Victoria. The fire commenced inside an open cut mine and burned for 45 days, clouding Morwell in smoke and forcing the town’s residents to evacuate. Fire Forensics senior fire investigator Keith Murray says deliberately lit fires bear unique characteristics from accidental ignitions. “There’s evidence and trails that you can recognise. The one I can think
Thievery can play a big part in deliberately lit mining fires.
of, just a couple of months ago that I attended, was the fire destroyed an excavator,” Murray says. “From the external scene examination, there was debris lying to the side. One part of the debris was the cab door. Analysing the door frame, there was a small dent in the metalwork to the top of the door. “Placing the door back onto the excavator, you could see there was a gouge mark between the top of the door
Deliberately lit fires are just as deadly as any other mining safety incursion.
SAFETOWORK.COM.AU 48 JAN-FEB 2022
and the actual door frame. So, someone had tried to prise the door open. That was the first tell-tale sign or indicator for me of a deliberate act.” Murray says the location of the remains can also indicate the sequence of events and paint a picture of how the fire developed. “The second was the debris within the cab. If you break toughened glass, the glass will fragment into small pieces and fall onto the cab’s floor and outside the excavator. Once the fire is set, the fire destroys the cab’s contents and falls on top of the glass,” he says. “The glass then actually protects the floor, creating protection marks on the floor, in addition, the glass is also clean on both sides with no smoke staining. “You can observe this when you scrape the top debris away to reveal glass away. The cub floor underneath is clean, having been protected from the glass particles. So, if the fire started in the excavator, you would have a lot of smoke, a lot of soot, a lot of
