On Sunday, there was an incident out at Quintette that could have led to an injury.
According to CEO Brian Sullivan, a water truck was coming down the hill when the driver was unable to make a curve and hit a safety berm.
The driver was not badly hurt and was treated on-site, but at one point in time, there was some thought that the person might need to be transported to an emergency room. But the incident took place on the weekend, so how does the emergency room closures affect the mine?
Sullivan says the incident was a level three incident. “That means there was a potential for injury, but no injury. Now, if it were somebody needing urgent care, depending on the level of care, we’d probably have to transport them to a larger centre anyway. So we have a contract with STARS, as all mines do. If it were a more serious, urgent matter, it would be something that we would expect to be helicopter transport to a level one trauma centre. For that, we have a helicopter pad right by the security building, in the main parking lot.”
He says the contract with STARS is a part of the mines act. “We are well above the basic safety code needed for a mine like Quintette,” says Sullivan. “We have a couple of layers of overlap at Quintette. Number one, we have our own well-trained, experienced mine rescue team. So these people are your neighbours that have training and certifications—in some cases full EMT level—but the mine rescue team would be the people that first respond to an incident. We have mind rescue people on each shift. I’m sure they were the ones who removed the person from the truck and probably if there was any work that needed to be done to stabilize the person, it would be first of all, our mine rescue personnel that did it.” Depending on the nature and severity of the injury, he says, mine rescue would also be responsible for transporting that person. “We have an ambulance on site, that mine rescue operates. And the injured person would be taken down to the security building, where we have what is essentially a doctor’s office.”
It is this step that the water truck driver made it to, not needing a higher level of care. But if they did, that’s when patients can be medivaced out by STARS.
Because of this, Sullivan says the mine itself is not affected by the ER closure. “It’s not a situation where the ER going on diversion will shut us down or put us at risk of shutting down from a technical minds act perspective.”
But, he says, anything that affects the viability of the community and the quality of life for the mine’s workers, is something the mine is concerned about. “We’ve been following it closely. Conuma has a point person to make sure that the concerns of our employees are voiced and heard by the district and by Northern Health. We have quite a number of people who have attended the various community meetings.
“We strongly oppose anything done to reduce the amount or availability of medical care at Tumbler Ridge, because anything that’s bad for families in Tumbler Ridge is automatically bad for Conuma, even if it’s not a technical problem under the mines act, Anything that affects families—whether it’s schools or daycare, healthcare or anything else that affects the quality of life affects our ability to be to have the best environment for our employees.”
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
