This week at the mine featured a few significant events. There was a fire in the pebble crusher that the Mine Rescue team handled easily. Another day, we had an electrical storm that blew out all the power for the whole mine with a wicked explosion right behind the tool crib. When the power cut out, hundreds of liters of water and concentrate just puked out onto the floor of the mill, flooding the place. Gravity-fed water into the mill, without the powered pumps to get the water out of the mill, means water has nowhere to go but onto the floor when a sudden power failure occurs.
Thursday was by far the most exciting day - Kelsey and I were assigned to help the Mine Rescue Team train for their upcoming competition. "Helping" them consists of letting them practise tying their harnesses on us, but more importantly by playing a victim in different scenarios. These guys are so much fun, the laughs never ended. Our day was interrupted by the third significant event of the week - a water main burst underneath the road leading into the security gate. This road also happens to lie next to the parking lot, and carnage ensued. (movie here - it had died down by this point) More than 40 cars were damaged. Kozak and McCann were stranded at the welcome trailer. The parking spots closest to the entrance (ironically the "good" spots) were hit the hardest. Because we were with the Mine Rescue team, we had VIP access to the parking lot to assess the damage and make sure nobody was hurt.
Afterwards we went to play on the ropes. We got to practise ascending with prussiks, switching ourselves to a different rope at the top, and repelling down on the new rope. Then Gerry threw a new scenario at the team and they had to rescue Pete from the top of the rope. Meanwhile, Pete was just relaxing. Neal went up to rescue Pete, and they became very familiar.
This past week was one that will not be soon forgotton.
(If you missed the link from the thumbnail above, you can get to the gallery here.)