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Events/Disaster · 1999

Northparkes block cave air blast

Disaster, 1999-11-24, Australia.

What happened

At about 2.50 pm on 24 November 1999 about 5.5 million cubic metres of rock fell into the void of the Northparkes copper and gold mine, creating an air blast that killed four workers. About 65 people were underground. The Coroner found production took precedence and the air gap guidelines for block caving had not been followed.1,2

Why it matters

Northparkes was the first block caving mine in Australia, and the Coroner's findings shaped how block caving is regulated there.1,2

Story cards

Around the same time

  1. Copper is 97 per cent of Zambias foreign exchange earnings

    The dependence made a safe export route a political priority.3,4

  2. Chile nationalises large copper mining

    It put Chile's copper under state control.5,6,7,8

  3. Benguela Railway closes to Zairian traffic

    Political differences between Zaire and Angola shut the shortest route for Shaba exports.9,10

  4. Roros Mining Town inscribed

    UNESCO World Heritage listing event.11

  5. Privatisation of ZCCM weakens TAZARA's copper traffic

    More copper then went by road along southern routes and the Tanzam highway.3,12

  6. DRC cobalt boom

    USGS finds most artisanal cobalt was processed by Chinese firms in the DRC or exported to China.13,14,15

  7. Sewell Mining Town inscribed

    UNESCO World Heritage listing event.16

  8. Manefay landslides at Bingham Canyon

    UGS says Kennecott had a sophisticated network of geotechnical monitors in place.17,18

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Where next

Events

An example ofSouth Broken Hill silver mine airblastNorthparkes' 1999 airblast killed four. South Broken Hill's in 1895 killed nine.19

Sources

  1. 1999 Northparkes Air Blast case study (Learning from disasters) NSW Resources Regulator
  2. Parkes (item Q605513), coordinate location P625 Wikidata
  3. 'Win-win' contested: negotiating the privatisation of Africa's Freedom Railway with the 'Chinese of today' Journal of Modern African Studies 59(1) (Cambridge University Press)
  4. Wikidata item Q985822 (Kapiri Mposhi)
  5. Allende and the nationalisation of Chilean copper (milestone essay) US Department of State, Office of the Historian
  6. Annual Report 2011, History Codelco
  7. Chile: Salvador Allende's leftist regime, 1970-73 US Library of Congress Federal Research Division (via countrystudies.us)
  8. Santiago (item Q2887), coordinate location P625 Wikidata
  9. Zaire SNCZ Railway Project, Staff Appraisal Report 1986-ZR (25 April 1979) World Bank
  10. Wikidata item Q223914 (Lobito)
  11. Roros Mining Town and the Circumference UNESCO World Heritage Centre
  12. Wikidata item Q239580 (Kitwe)
  13. China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and artisanal cobalt mining from 2000 through 2020 (publication page) US Geological Survey
  14. China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and artisanal cobalt mining from 2000 through 2020 PNAS (S. Gulley, via Europe PMC)
  15. Kolwezi (item Q271404), coordinate location P625 Wikidata
  16. Sewell Mining Town UNESCO World Heritage Centre
  17. Bingham Canyon's Manefay Landslides and the Future of the Mine Utah Geological Survey
  18. Bingham Canyon Mine (item Q2450901), coordinate location P625 Wikidata
  19. 1895 South Broken Hill Silver Mine case study (Learning from disasters) NSW Resources Regulator

From the Prospector Trails mining history dataset: each fact links to the source it was checked against. Figures are as the source gives them, in the money of their day. Not investment advice.

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Cover photos from Wikimedia Commons: Haul trucks by Lechhabmed, CC BY-SA 4.0; Drilling and blasting by Siim Roov, CC BY-SA 4.0.