Risk management
How mining companies prepare for cyclone season MINING COMPANIES HAVE SHOWN THAT WHILE WEATHER EVENTS CAN BE UNCONTROLLABLE AT TIMES, THEIR IMPACT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE. VANESSA ZHOU WRITES. over the past year. Fortescue was forced to suspend its rail activities and shipping operations from Port Hedland in the wake of Tropical Cyclone Veronica in March 2019. Just a month later, BHP announced a potential loss of around six to eight million tonnes of production due to the Port Hedland closure. The same region was put on alert when Tropical Cyclone Damien threatened to hit the Pilbara coast in February, bringing with it the risk of strong winds, heavy rain and dangerous storm tides. Tropical Cyclone Damien was the strongest tropical cyclone to cross the Western Australian coast since category four Tropical Cyclone Christine in 2013, according to the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM).
The weather agency recorded a peak wind gust of 194 kilometres an hour as Tropical Cyclone Damien made a direct hit on the Pilbara town of Karratha. Port Hedland, Dampier and Ashburton ports were all closed, while heavy rain drenched the Solomon and Karratha airports that service Fortescue and Rio Tinto’s iron ore operations. Thankfully, Fortescue chief executive Elizabeth Gaines says the impact of the 2019/2020 cyclone season has been minimal (at the time of writing). “While operations at Christmas Creek and Cloudbreak (in the Pilbara) were paused for a short period due to heavy rainfall, there was no impact on production,” Gaines tells Safe to Work. The health and safety of Fortescue’s people is the company’s highest priority during an extreme weather event.
Images credit: Fortescue Metals Group
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xtreme natural events can pose dangers to a mining operation, the people that work on them and the communities in which they are based. While cyclones are uncontrollable as they approach off the coast of Australia’s northern regions, the effect they have can be contained with the right preparation. Mining operations can guard against the hazards posed by a tropical cyclone in a number of ways. As per the famous quote of Benjamin Franklin, “if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” It’s an old adage that Australian mining companies have sensibly followed. Pilbara iron ore miners Fortescue Metals Group and BHP felt the pinch at their operations as tropical cyclones hit the Western Australian region
Fortescue Metals Group’s stockyard at Port Hedland.
SAFETOWORK 32 MAR-APR 2020
