The owners of an underground mine in Western Australia’s Goldfields have played down nearby residents’ concerns over a massive blast which had families running from their homes, terrified their roofs would collapse.
The mine, which has been operating continuously since 1963, has underground workings that extend about 1.2 kilometres below the surface, including underneath Williamstown.
A notice delivered by the mine operator Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines to Williamstown residents last week stated the blast would be 390 metres below the surface, move 128,000 tonnes of rock and use 62 tonnes of explosives.
The letter said the blast was “larger than what we normally fire due to the location of the stope and how it interacts with our existing workings”.
‘The kids were terrified’
Williamstown resident Mandy McPhee said her children were screaming as her whole house aggressively shook for a minute.
“We’re long-term residents of Williamstown so we’re familiar with blasting, however the blast that happened on Saturday was pretty extreme,” she said.
“I was doing my best to comfort them.”
A separate resident, who did not wish to be identified, sent the ABC video footage in which the loud and prolonged rumbling of the explosion could clearly be heard.
Ms McPhee said the blast had some residents concerned their homes were at risk.
“I didn’t know what to do. It was a crazy moment,” she said.
Ms McPhee has started a petition asking KCGM, owned by Perth-based gold miner Northern Star Resources, to agree not to detonate blasts of that scale again and to take responsibility for any potential damage to homes.
She said her insurance policy did not cover damage from mining activity and she could not afford to pay to have it fixed.
“We’re not bothered by the regular blasting — we’ve lived here in this house in Williamstown for 13 years,” she said.
“The issue is the blast that’s just been was huge — much, much bigger than anything we’ve ever experienced.”
Ms McPhee said she was concerned about the ongoing impacts the blast had on her daughter.
“That’s not acceptable — we’re in a residential area and KCGM needs to remember that.
“There’s children around who don’t understand what’s happening, which is why I’m going out and doing this.”
Suburb ‘like Swiss cheese’
Paul Harris has lived in Williamstown since 1996 and said he believed a house could eventually collapse or fall through the ground due to the blasts.
“This place is like Swiss cheese,” he said.
“You can hear things fall in the middle of the night here … big thuds. As far as I’m concerned it’s dirt falling.
Mr Harris said he did not think the petition would make a difference as he had made more than 150 complaints to KCGM over the past 25 years, which he said had not been addressed.
“I already wrote on it [the petition] ‘good luck to you trying’, because I’ve tried that many times,” he said.
“But I’m willing to sign the petition because you have to keep going even for the young people that are up here.”
Some ‘happy’ with miner’s conduct
But not everyone was bothered by the large explosion, including Williamstown resident James Watson.
“We get blasting every night and in the morning, blasting doesn’t actually worry us,” he said.
Mr Watson said he was not concerned about damage to his property but did say it was possible, considering how long the blast went on for.
He said he attended community meetings organised by KCGM and he was happy with the organisation’s conduct.
“They always seem to be quite open about everything we question them on,” Mr Watson said.
KCGM general manager Kous Kirsten said the company always took into consideration the potential impacts of their operations on the Kalgoorlie-Boulder community.
“The level of Saturday’s blast vibration was consistent with regular blasts at the underground mine, although it was longer in duration.”
Mr Kirsten said residents were encouraged to contact KCGM’s public interaction line to provide feedback and discuss concerns or participate anonymously in the Local Voices survey online.
Fonte: ABC News
