Bushfire causes mine evacuation

Bushfire causes mine evacuation

26 November 2007

published by www.news.com.au

Australia — A large bushfire burning between Mount Isa and the George Fisher mine, in north-west Queensland, prompted the precautionary evacuation of workers by Xstrata last Friday.

Fire crews carried out back burning and used a grader to establish fire breaks to control the blaze along the Barkly Highway.

Ergon Energy spokesman John Fowler says a power blackout in Mount Isa was caused after flames threatened powerlines leading to the mine.

“The fire under the privately-owned high voltage transmission lines to one of the mines impacted on the available power supply coming from the Mica Creek Power Station,” he said.

“So in effect we had load shedding in Mount Isa because there wasn’t enough power coming into our network.

“Now we lost power to about 3,000 customers for around about 20 minutes so it was a short duration.”

The bushfire moved away from the mining lease over the weekend towards May Downs station.