The third of its kind accident within two months has left WCL authorities baffled and rattled as well.
Nagpur: The driver of a coal-loading vehicle and others had a narrow escape when the bench of earth caved in at Western Coalfield’s (WCL’s) Indar Opencast Mine on Sunday morning. However, machineries and the vehicle suffered extensive damage in the mishap. (Open-cast mines are dug on benches, which describe vertical levels of the hole. These benches are usually on four to sixty meter intervals, depending on the size of the machinery that is being used. Many quarries do not use benches, as they are usually shallow.) The third of its kind accident within two months has left WCL authorities baffled and rattled as well. The benches were constructed for trucks for transportation of loaded coals.
The bench, admeasuring 10 meters in height and 4 meters wide, caved in at the mine coming under Kamptee Sub-Area. When the mishap occurred a SX-80 HDLC machine (crane) was loading coal into trucks. As the bench caved in, the rear portions of the crane and a truck crushed under the debris of massive quantity of earth. Displaying safety sense, the drive of the crane smashed glass of the cabin and rushed outside in the nick of time and saved his life.
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In the earlier accidents, an employee named Mohd Rasool, was crushed under debris along with machine when a similar kind of tragedy occurred at Kamptee Opencast Mine. He was pulled out after great efforts on the part of a rescue team. A drill operator Ashish Gupta too faced the same situation when the landslide took place a few days ago. However, such mishaps occur very rarely, said sources.
Commenting on the accident, Kamptee Sub-Area Manager Tarunkumar Trivedi said that such tragedies occur in mines on rare occasions. However, he refused to say a word on the fate of machine operator or loss due to the landslide.
Rajeev Ranjan Kushwaha ( rajeev.nagpurtoday@g
