Join CIM Magazine and the CIM Health & Safety Society for the third webinar in #The Safety Share series

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May 18, 2023, 1 p.m. EDT

This episode of #TheSafetyShare will be an open conversation about industrial health and safety at the face in an underground mining environment, with a focus on fatality prevention, disconnects between expectations and the reality and how to close the gap between what’s discussed on surface and how things happen underground. A productive mine is a safe mine, and over the years companies have improved at reducing fatalities and severe injuries, but our industry still has a long way to go in achieving our collective mission of zero lives lost, zero lives harmed. We’ll be hosting guest interviewer Roy Slack, Director, Cementation Americas, and guest speakers, Sandor and Amanda Basa, underground miners, to share their stories from the face, safety from the perspective of someone working underground day in and day out, and the challenges our industry must tackle on our journey to zero harm. 

GUESTS


Roy Slack
Director
Cementation Americas

Roy is a professional engineer with over 40 years experience in mine construction, design and development. In 1998 he started Cementation’s operations in North America, and retired from the company in 2019. In 2013, Roy was appointed to the Province of Ontario’s first Prevention Council to advise the government on workplace safety, where he served for 3 years. In 2017 Nipissing University bestowed upon him an Honorary Doctorate. He served as President of CIM 2019-2020 and is an active executive of the CIM Health & Safety Society. 

 


Sandor Basa
Lead miner and supervisor

 

Sandor has been working underground for 25 years but has been in mining since he was a child. He grew up in a small northern mining town, in a mining family. His stepdad was an underground supervisor for more than 30 years and Sandor remembers being as young as 10 going underground with him and being hooked. One thing he never forgot was how hard workplace fatalities and critical injuries was for his stepfather and the entire community. Sandor wants to make a difference in the industry, not by metres of rock he breaks, but by safety. The most influential position in eliminating underground fatalities and critical injuries is the front-line supervisors and leaders. Engineering and technical advancements can only do so much, the rest is up to us to make the right choices, do things the right way, the safe way. He truly believes the mining industry can reach zero harm and still exceed all development and production goals.

Amanda Basa
Scooptram operator
Redpath Mining

Amanda has been mining underground for almost 15 years now.  Most of her career has been spent running scoops in northern Nunavut, Yukon, and B.C.  She has witnessed some horrific accidents underground, including her own accident with a piece of loose rock at the face. Since day one, Amanda has pushed herself to practice safety every day, and she is now the joint health and safety representative on her work site. One of the most rewarding tasks she has is to train the trainer, passing down her safety knowledge to others, who will train workers. She believes we all have an obligation to ourselves and our families to always work safe and take safety home.

Nelson Bodnarchuk
Vice President Health & Safety
Torex Gold Resources

Nelson brings over 21 years of global, multi-commodity operating leadership experience. He has worked in the engineering, operational technology, IT, nuclear, automation, maintenance, software development and banking sectors. He joined Torex in 2014 as the Director of Operational Systems, overseeing critical aspects of the successful construction, start-up and operation of the Greenfield build of the ELG open pit mine and processing plant. Over the past three years, he has led the Health & Safety teams at Torex, delivering integrated systems supporting the safe operations of the Morelos Mine Complex in Guerrero State, Mexico.

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