Queensland Coal Disaster Cover Up? RSHQ only provided the Prosecutor a limited scope of Information related to only the 6th May 2020 at Grosvenor? The actual day of the Methane xplosion
Whichever way you look at it the lack of prosecution action against Anglo Grosvenor Management is a giant, unacceptable and disgusting failure for Queensland Mine Workers Safety and Health oversight.
How many Sections of the Act and Regulations have to be broken?
How negligent or incompetent does Management have to be to be?
Do Mine Workers have to be killed at work for anyone to be held to account?
Isn’t what these five men have had to endure and do so for their rest of their lives enough?
What happened at Grosvenor to those 5 men is nothing short of a Disaster for them.
The horrific burns, rescuing themselves and each other off the face, having to be put in induced coma’s for weeks, ongoing operations and the associated permanent physical and mental trauma.
Let alone the workmates and emergency response workers who in a number of cases suffered long term PTSD.
Information is that the RSHQ (Mines Inspectorate) only gave the Office of the Work Health and Safety Prosecutor (OWHSP) a limited scope of information to investigate.
The events on May 6th 2020 was all that the Prosecutor were allowed to investigate.
NONE OF THE EVIDENCE from the days, weeks, months, years leading up to May 6th were investigated.
The Inspectorate (RSHQ) didn’t give OWHSP the ability to investigate that.
Therefore none of the evidence from the Ministerial Inquiry dealing with events between the 1st of July 2019 and the 5th May 2020 could be referenced.
I assume that also includes none of the relevant information within the RSHQ files including their own Investigation Report, besides what happened on the 6th of May 2020.
If true; this just defies belief.
It goes against the whole way the Coal Mining Act and Regulations were drafted, the way they are written, the way they are to be implemented and followed, and finally the way they are supposed to be overseen and enforced by the Mines Inspectorate.
For those of us that closely followed the Ministerial Inquiry it seemed that many of efforts from various legal teams at Ministerial Inquiry, was to keep what the Inspectors and RSHQ did and did not know, and what they did and did not do, very quiet.
How convenient it will be that no Mines Inspector or the CEO of RSHQ will be required to prepare a statement and give sworn evidence or be cross examined.
No one from Anglo Management will ever be called to give any public statements or give evidence either at the Ministerial Inquiry or now in the Industrial Magistrates Court.
My opinion is this is mainly to further suppress information becoming public and to save all public accountability for the RSHQ over what occurred at Grosvenor.
Mine workers lives and safety and health must mean nothing to RSHQ compared to their well paid Public Service Careers.
This latest effort by RSHQ is in my view the most deliberate and blatantly cover up in all of its 97 years of existence.
Just as one example take the fact of Anglo Grosvenor Management not doing the spontaneous combustion risk assessment is a straight non-compliance with the Coal Mining Regulations in particular Regulation 317 (At end of post)
The Underground Mine Manager Mr Niehaus wrote on the WRAC for Gas Drainage in LW104 on the 27th of February 2020.
The WRAC was also signed off on the same page as Mr Niehaus’s comments by the the Site Senior Executive Mr Griffiths and the Process Manager on the same date.
INCREASED SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION RISK DUE TO INCREASED GAS DRAINAGE HAS NOT BEEN ASSESSED in this WRAC
ADDITIONAL WRAC REQUIRED TO ASSESS and CONTROL SPON COM RISK
ACTION in ENABLON by ………. to COMPLETE BY 31/05/2020
The Grosvenor Inquiry states as Findings that
Finding 90
In the Board’s view, spontaneous combustion was the probable cause of the serious accident. It was also the cause of an ignition that occurred at Grosvenor on 8 June 2020.
Finding 30
The Board makes the following findings in relation to planning for gas management on longwall 104 (LW 104):
m) Mining on LW 104 should not have commenced without that spontaneous combustion risk assessment being conducted;
q) Although there was no obligation to do so, the Inspectorate was not advised at any time that no risk assessment for spontaneous combustion associated with increased goaf drainage at LW 104 had been conducted, nor that none would be conducted until the end of May 2020, well after production commenced.
Finding 60
Grosvenor’s history on previous longwalls was such as to require close attention by the Inspectorate to the mine’s gas management systems and practices at LW 104. This did not occur, with the result that there was a lost opportunity to discover that the mine’s production rate exceeded the capacity of its goaf drainage system.
The Inspectorate should have been more proactive.
I just cannot understand how and why the situation with oversight of the Queensland Mining Industry has degraded to the point where everything is shrouded in secrecy, drags out for years and it seems no one is held accountable.
Are any of the Public Servants referred to in the Black Lung White Lies via Recommendation 67 still employed at RSHQ?
The committee recommends that the Public Service Commissioner review the
transcripts of public and private hearings of the committee involving Queensland public servants and consider the extent to which those officers cooperated with and assisted the committee, including whether or not any public servant misled the committee or otherwise breached the Code of Practice for Public Service Employees Assisting or Appearing Before Parliamentary Committees.
transcripts of public and private hearings of the committee involving Queensland public servants and consider the extent to which those officers cooperated with and assisted the committee, including whether or not any public servant misled the committee or otherwise breached the Code of Practice for Public Service Employees Assisting or Appearing Before Parliamentary Committees.
We will never officially know since the Investigation of the Public Servants never happened.
Instead the Labor Government just sat on it and waited till the last State Election and then quietly and it seems legally buried it.
REGULATION 317
R 317 Risk assessment
- The underground mine manager for an underground mine must ensure a risk assessment is carried out under this section to decide a safe method of extraction for second workings at the mine before the second workings start.
- The risk assessment must have regard to at least the following matters
d) the anticipated gas make
g) the proposed methods for the following—
-
- strata control and support;
- ventilation;
- controlling spontaneous combustion
