Health & safety Eye in the sky
Tailings dams are a central part of mining across the world. Yet their inexpensiveness and versatility also come with dangers, especially when it comes to landslides. With high-profi le disasters continuing to blight the industry, it’s unsurprising that insiders have battled to make problems easier to spot. Andrea Valentino speaks with Dave Fox at Geospatial Insight and Professor Stephen Grebby at the University of Nottingham to learn about the limitations of existing models, how new analysis of satellite imagery can alert mine operators to unstable tailings – and what that could all mean for health and safety, as well as for mining’s broader reputation.
that’s what they were looking for. Hundreds of miners burrowing into the dirt, desperate to make their fortune in jade, and escape the scorched earth and ramshackle huts they called home. The fact it had rained for the past day meant little to them. That the
I
t happened last July, when the downpours in Myanmar were at their heaviest and the woods around Hpakant were at their richest jade. In fact,
local government had warned these freelance ‘pickers’ about the danger meant even less. It soon would. In the early morning of 2 July, the tailings around the mine crumbled away. A wave of filth 20ft high tumbled with it, sweeping the miners and their shacks away into the valley.
All told, around 200 people perished that drab July morning. And though the disaster clearly had many
World Mining Frontiers /
www.nsenergybusiness.com
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Andrey Armyagov /
Shutterstock.com
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