Mount Morgan mine fire on Monday night

An excavator was deployed to stop the burning structure from spreading to other parts of the heritage-listed Mount Morgan mine on Monday night.

A fire ripped through a structure at the old Mount Morgan gold mine site on Monday night, thankfully not destroying any of the heritage listed buildings.

Fireys were called to the scene around 6.30pm and two crews from Mount Morgan attended with two more crews from Rockhampton.

The fire was at an old structure on the mining area itself, that was virtually a pile of iron and timber on the ground.

Mount Morgan Fire and Rescue Auxiliary Captain Darren Barnicoat, who was at the scene, said it would have been part of the infrastructure for running pipework and where one of the old mills were.

“It was one of the derelict buildings that had fallen down, it was mainly just the shell and roof to it, the rest had collapsed,” Mr Barnicoat said.

Just after 9pm, the crews got an excavator that was on site to knock down the remaining parts that were still burning.

“That made our jobs a lot easier and we used less water,” Mr Barnicoat said.

The fire was declared completely out by around 10.30pm.

It is not known what the cause of the fire was but it is not being treated as suspicious.

The fire was in an area the Department of Resources is responsible for.

The mine site and majority of the buildings became state heritage listed in 1992, however the structure impacted was not heritage listed.

There have not been too many fires reported at the old mine site, with only two in the past few years.

“We wouldn’t want to see any of the heritage listed or office buildings go up … But for those areas they have a very good water fire fighting capability on site,” Mr Barnicoat said.

The township has been on level six water restrictions since March 2021 and emergency water trucking began in April, with up to 20 tankers delivering 500kL of water each day.

When asked if the lack of water security was a concern for fireys, Mr Barnicoat said they used other fire fighting strategies, like the use of the excavator.

“We are pretty good because the semi trailers that are carting the water is keeping up with the requirements,” he said.

“If there is a structure fire, we have to use the water.

“Where we can, we will try to use not too much water.”

The mine has been closed since 1990 and over the years there have been many promises to restart work at the site.

Heritage Minerals took over the project in mid-2020 and has plans to use new technology to do tailing retreatment activities and retrieve gold and copper at the mine.

The company hopes to be operational by 2023 and employ 150 people with the project to run for 100 years.