SIMEC Mining crew flies the flag for Whyalla operations

SIMEC Mining’s Emergency Response Team (ERT) celebrated a win, returning fresh from the South Australian Mines Emergency Response Competition with silverware and a truckload of extra knowledge, experience and learnings.

SIMEC Mining team members travelled to the OZ Minerals’ Carrapateena mine site to compete against teams from Olympic Dam, Prominent Hill, Carrapateena and Cadia Valley (NSW) in the prestigious competition that ran from Friday to Sunday (October 14-16).

They came away with the SA Department for Energy and Mining Theory Trophy while performing well in all disciplines including an underground search and rescue scenario for which they had no prior experience.

Up against smoke, fire, and hostile weather

Other challenging tasks included search and rescue in a smoke-filled container, vertical rescue where they had to haul a ‘casualty’ out of a container, an industrial rescue, road crash and dealing with an aviation-fuel fire in an actual Cobham aircraft.

Team Manager Luke Frost said the SIMEC Mining team did itself and the company proud as it lived out the GFG Alliance and SIMEC values of safety and wellbeing. The first test was the wet weather to get to the mine site, 140km north of Port Augusta, and from there it was an ‘awesome’ experience and result for the team.

“We were up against some of these bigger operations, our team was awesome, bonded brilliantly and came back all the better for the experience.

“It wasn’t just the three days of the event either, this team trained for seven days … they lived, breathed, ate and worked together for ten days to build a great rapport and understanding.”

Team Manager Luke Frost

Luke said the SA Department for Energy and Mining Theory Trophy was a great achievement as team members were put through a rigorous process which included 50 questions of varying difficulty including knowledge tests on gases, flammability limits and haulage system ratios.

Sharing invaluable knowledge to keep us all safe

SIMEC Mining (Whyalla) Manager Healthy and Safety, Steve Player congratulated the team members for their efforts as they passed every test with flying colours.

“Our ERT is drawn from three mine sites at SMR, Iron Baron and Iron Knob so just the team building and sharing of knowledge was invaluable while they also learned about other teams and the way they do things.”

“We were up there with the best of them and I think they learned more in ten days than they would learn in a year of just training.

“They are coming back with a whole load of knowledge and experience they can put into practice on our sites to keep everyone in our GFG Alliance family safe, and safe in the knowledge we have a team ready to spring into action if there is an emergency situation.”

SIMEC Mining (Whyalla) Manager Healthy and Safety, Steve Player

The Cadia Valley team from NSW was the overall winner of the competition taking home the SAMERC Perpetual Trophy.  SIMEC Mining was a Premium Sponsor of the competition and will be hosting the event in Whyalla for the first time in October next year.

The SIMEC Mining team was Luke Frost (Team Manager), Ella Blackwell (Captain), Alex Barnes-Tripp (Vice Captain), Emma Mullenger (Medic), Brendan Schwenke, Jeff Wood, Phil Cusano and Ben Hussey.