While most mines take extreme safety precautions, mining as a rule is a risky operation. Often the combination of masses of people working and digging underground and heavy moving machinery and equipment, accidents are almost inevitable.
Just recently South Africans were shocked with the 5.5 magnitude earth tremor that shook large parts of the country, causing one death and the evacuation of thousands of miners from the Great Noligwa and Moab Khotsong mines in the North West province.
While tremors such as these are not frequent occurrences in South Africa, seismologists did warn that, due to the effects of mining in the country, frequent seismological events such as this can be expected.
The combination of man and machinery in confined spaces with limited air, visibility and explosives amid often unstable rock is a recipe that will often lead to fatalities where an unscheduled event occurs and communication is constrained. To add to this volatility, recent labour issues in the local mining sectors and underground confrontations with illegal underground miners has added further instability to an already shaky work environment.
In mitigating the risks associated with mining activities, clear, efficient and controlled communication is imperative. Management and workers need a seamless flow of information and data to stay in control of operations and deal with the variable situations as they arise. Often incidents snowball and escalate to crisis, if not managed and controlled on time and information is the critical link that enables the correct decision and action to be taken on time to avoid and manage a crisis.
"In a crisis situation, every second is crucial. Picture the collapse of a tunnel underground and the events that usually follow as a result. The shock, confusion and panic by workers often leads to impulsive actions that ignore laid down safety procedures and this is where injury and loss of life normally occurs," said Tony Sipho Sibanda, Business Development Executive for Emcom Wireless, who has been assisting several mines in South Africa and Africa in upgrading their communication systems.
"You want to know where every personnel member is at that exact moment, their status, whether they are secure, trapped or injured and what resources are available and can be deployed to attend to them."
In the tremor that originated in Orkney in the North West recently, AngoGold Ashanti managed to evacuate 3 300 workers from their two mines safely, and while there were 28 miners with minor injuries, communication aided in prioritising resources and getting everyone to safety on time.
"Safely hoisting all 3 300 people to surface after an earthquake of this size is an achievement of which we're immensely proud," said Mike O'Hare, AngloGold Ashanti's Chief Operating Officer: South Africa, in a statement.
"Our infrastructure responded as it was designed to, and our safety protocols worked as they should."
Sibanda says, however, that while all mines in the country are mandated by legislation to be equipped with the necessary radio communications systems, some are still relying on older analogue technology and legacy systems, which compromise workers' safety in the event of crises when stretched beyond their normal operating limits.
Like most global technologies that have evolved rapidly, radio has recently gone through its own digital revolution. Much like cellular technology, radio has seen the introduction of devices that go beyond voice communication and now integrate data and other applications into one device.
"With the change to Digital Mobile Radio (DMR) you have a lot more applications and services available than with the traditional analogue radios. Recording and tracking now allows a replay of incidents to recreate scenes and better prepare for the future. With real-time tracking and sensors on the handsets, you can even see whether a person is standing, lying down or sitting in an upright position," says Sibanda.
"You can further integrate technologies like Bluetooth into radio to interface with devices like heart rate monitors to monitor, in real-time, the breathing and heart rates of users."
Radio's digital revolution has brought huge benefits to the mining industry in particular, where instant, clear communication is crucial in maintaining safety and increasing productivity.
Since the early days of mining, operators needed to be highly creative in finding ways to communicate essential information to workers down in the pit.
In the late 1800s in Kimberley, for instance, hundreds of communication lines criss-crossed the big hole, and a Morse-code-like bell or knock system was deployed to relay messages. Today, we have evolved to an extent where the modernisation of this technology makes it possible to integrate radio with other mediums such as cellular and landline and calls can be placed and transferred between them. In a disaster, a miner underground can be linked to a medical emergency centre hundreds of kilometres away for instant help.
The regulation of spectrum for professional mobile radio also ensures that frequencies are granted for secure authorised use in specific locations, eliminating the risk of interference or congestion through uncontrolled traffic in mission-critical events.
This makes it easier to run a command and control centre, relay and monitor all traffic to ensure priority is given in emergencies to those who need to communicate and carry out lifesaving operations.
"We need to get our backbone infrastructure ready for events such as the recent quake and aftershocks and not be found on the back foot when a big one does come along. It should not have to be a quake or loss of further lives that shakes us to action," says Sibanda.
DMR also comes with lower infrastructure costs over wide areas of coverage, and legacy analogue systems can easily be migrated to digital networks - at relatively low costs, without any disruption of service through staged migrations. The maturity of this technology over the past few years and increased demand for it globally, has played a major factor in also driving prices down and seen most implementations achieved cheaper than conventional analogue systems. This is great news for operations wanting to modernise, improve safety and productivity and not compromise profitability.