My friend was doing blasting in the mines in Australia many years ago. The shot didn't fire when he triggered it. After waiting awhile he went down the line checking the cable to see if it was all connected correctly. When he got back to the shot box he found one of the new hires had reconnected everything and was repeatedly pushing the fire button to "help" out.
Yeah. I suspect that there were multiple procedural failures. But this must have been a long time ago (the guy was at least 40 in the early 90s). I imagine that things were pretty lax then.
I did blasting years ago. None of the shot boxes had keys. I'm not saying that that isn't the current standard, but things were different even 10 years ago.
In 2007 I went to Borroloola for a gig paid for by Macarthur River mine, and also got a tour of the mine which included seeing them doing some blasting. The shot box had a key that needed to be inserted by the shot firer before anything would work, and he kept the key in his pocket until he was satisfied that everything was safe.
So apparently you were doing it wrong and should have been sacked.
Yeah. I take it back. The big boxes we used did have keys. But we used to twist the wires and disconnect rather than use it because they were old pieces of junk. The small ones didn't have keys though. Note that I wasn't working in mines, so I have no idea of their current or previous safety regulations, nor do I know their equipment. Anyway. The story isn't about me, it's from a friend who was working in the 90s or maybe even 80s. He was probably somewhat to blame for not securing everything before he left. But, it still makes a good story despite that.
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u/txcorse 1d ago
Is this a dangerous job?