OM Manganese fined $487,500 over the ‘catastrophic’ wall failure which killed Bootu Creek mine worker Craig Butler

An international mining company has been fined the equivalent of two days profits over the death of one of its Territory workers, who was engulfed in a tsunami of rubble.

An international mining company has been fined the equivalent of two day’s profit after ignoring the early warning signs of a “catastrophic” wall failure which resulted in a Territory mine supervisor being engulfed in a tsunami of rubble.

OM Manganese was convicted and fined $487,500 for its failure to comply with its workplace safety duty and exposing nine of its workers to the risk of death or serious injury, four years after the death of 59-year-old Craig Butler.

On Wednesday, Darwin Local Court judge Thomasin Opie said the Singapore-based mining company ignored the early signs of danger at its Bootu Creek Mine, 110km north of Tennant Creek, on August 24, 2019.

Ms Opie said workers had raised the alarm over dangerous conditions in the pit days before the catastrophic slip, reporting rocks tumbling down the slope and catch berms starting to lose structure, crack and give way.

A pit wall collapse in a different section of the Bootu Creek mine.

She said under the company’s own risk matrix these danger signs meant there was an “extreme and unacceptable” chance of a wall failure.

“The only proper response was to close the pit. The defendant continued operation,” Ms Opie said.

Ms Opie said Mr Butler was assessing the reports of wall movement when a section of the wall near the top of the 100m deep pit began to fail.

Witnesses described watching the 59-year-old start to run before he was “engulfed” in 48,000 cubic metres of rock, with an 80m wide slurry of deep mud and debris narrowly avoiding two other workers.

It took 11 days for Mr Butler’s body to be recovered.

The 59-year-old man buried alive after a wall collapsed at a Territory mine site Saturday has been identified as Craig Butler.

In their victim impact statements, two of his friends described their ongoing trauma, with both mine workers saying they had not returned to the industry.

“They write of the shock and devastation in seeing the wall collapsing knowing that Mr Butler could not survive,” Ms Opie said.

The court heard that in designing the pit OMM faced a balancing act between economic profits and worker safety, and chose the more “aggressive” strategy — opting for a wall angle five degrees steeper than an engineer consultant’s recommendation.

Ms Opie said due to this aggressive design there was an even greater need for “vigilance”, with experts recommending various safeguards.

“This was not implemented,” she said.

Bootu Creek Mine operator OM Manganese representative Andre de Villiers (left) speaks with lawyer James Stuchbery outside the Darwin Local Court on Monday after the company pleaded guilty to failing to comply with a health and safety duty following a fatal pit wall collapse in 2019. Picture: Jason Walls

But Ms Opie acknowledged OMM had shown remorse and implemented changes at its mine sites to prevent future tragedies.

OMM was convicted and fined $487,500 — less than a third of the potential maximum penalty of $1.5m — and was required to pay $193,000 to cover NT WorkSafe costs and a $1000 victims levy.

OMM’s 2022 annual report said it generated $US82.6m ($128.2m) in profits — meaning the court penalty is equivalent to less than two days’ profit for the Singapore-based mining company.

A spokeswoman for OMM said the company accepted full responsibility for their worker’s death and the impact on his fellow employees, calling it an “unspeakable tragedy”.

“(And) acknowledging that no monetary penalty can ever compensate Mr Butler’s family for their loss,” she said

Northern Territory’s Work Health and Safety Regulator Ms Peggy Cheong said the 59-year-old mine superintendent’s death could have been averted had OMM listened to their own consultants.

Ms Cheong called on mine operators to learn from this tragedy and “do not put operational efficacies before the safety of your workers”.

Originally published as OM Manganese fined $487,500 over the ‘catastrophic’ wall failure which killed Bootu Creek mine worker Craig Butler