Nearly Shafted Down A Gold Mine
As a young fresh faced lad just out of school with a thirst for a bit of adventure and a year off before going to university, my old man packed me off to Zimbabwe to work on a few Gold Mines & Cattle Ranches (yeah none of that trustifarian interailing bollocks for me). Anyway I was enlisted into the Underground Surveying & Safety team, which involves running around with a clipboard, theodolite, measuring tape, crowbar and hard hat!

Going down a working mine is hard & dangerous work, digging out the gold ore is done with lots of jack hammers, explosives, high pressure water (that will cut your arm off if it bursts) and did I say litterally millions of tonnes of rock ready to fall on your head at no warning. This particular one was very proud of its 365 day record of zero fatalities Its 100% humidity and +30C and at a mile or so underground you'll find the toughest guys who work hard, but do it with the best and blackest of humour.

As part of the safety team our first job after a blasting, was to make sure that the working areas where clear of loose and hanging rock. Normally clearing up after a blast was a simple business of checking that the blast was successful and tapping the odd loose bit of rock off the walls and roof, But this particular cavern we where working was pretty big, imagine a space about the size of a DIY Warehouse store on tilted on its end to around 70degrees, because it had a particularly dangerous slope you got a lot of rock hanging over head and if it was loose there was nothing to stop it falling a few hundred feet and squashing anything that came in its path.

Anyway on this day a bit of hanging rock about the size of a bus stuck to the roof and probably weighing in at 50 tonnes, which needed to be cleared, but we weren't going to be able to do it with a crowbar, no what we needed was dynamite!

Kids! Safety warning these are not fireworks, this is some serious shit high explosive, when dad says stand back he means stand back. Anyway I digress, back to the hanging rock story.

The best way to get the rock down is to pop a couple of sticks of dyna-gell under it and the detonation will act as a bit of a clap to loosen the rock off and hopefully gravity will take its course. So off I go with a couple of sticks in my pocket and a trail of blasting cord, I position the sticks in a appropriate position insert the detonation cord and retreat back to the safe position, following all the whistles and making sure everyone is clear we lit the fuse and waited.

Bang! And then nothing.... bugger that didn't shift it, we wait a few minutes to let the dust clear and let the fumes subside and go and check on our handywork, and the bitching rock is still stuck firmly to the roof. Albeit with a nice crack in it now, so we insert a few more sticks of dyna-gel and another for good measure and repeat the process.

Bigger Bang!!! And then nothing... pissflaps this is a stubborn bitch of a rock, we return to the scene and our efforts have not even dented it so this time its all the dyna-gel and blasting cord we can get our hands on positioned in every nook and cranny, this rock is toast! We get ready to set the fuses and retreat to the safety area when, there is a sudden rumble......

Yup you know the score I'd been laying explosives under 50 tonnes of rock for 15 minutes and it falls down by itself, in true close shave moments I scrambled away just in time to see the whole shitting bastard lot wallop down the cavern & smash a few hundred feet bellow.

Anyway the next day we changed the safety sign to 366 days of accident free days.
( rwbthatisme is on holiday this week, Sat 21 Aug 2010, 16:11, 1 reply)

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Dynamite, big rocks and being underground - what could possibly go wrong?
(boozehound is drinking your bar dry, Sat 21 Aug 2010, 22:39, closed)