Co-worker tells of raising alarm and searching after mudrush which killed Michael Welsh at Mt Lyell copper mine

A MINER working on the day a co-worker was killed in a mudrush has told an inquest of digging through mud looking for him.

The mining deaths inquest is being heard in the Hobart Magistrates Court complex in Liverpool St.

A MINER working on the day a co-worker was killed in a mudrush has told an inquest of digging through mud looking for him.

Michael Barnett was operating machinery at Copper Mines of Tasmania’s Mt Lyell mine on January 17, 2014, the day on which 53-year-old Michael Welsh was killed.

The inquest heard how Mr Barnett, a bogger operator, saw mud coming from an area where Mr Welsh was working, so jumped out of his own machine to look for him.

“I turned lights on and off at different times looking for Mick. Not knowing where he was, I thought I might be able to see a light.”

But Mr Barnett said he could not detect a light coming from Mr Welsh’s cabin, so returned to his bogger and raised the alarm.

In an interview transcript read to the court, Mr Barnett said over the radio system: “We’ve had a mud rush … I can’t find Digger [Mr Welsh].”

Mr Barnett said co-workers arrived at the scene and they tried to access the area but the mud was “ramping up”.

“We walked as close as we could but because of the mud you couldn’t get there,” Mr Barnett said.

He said the height and quantity of the mud made it difficult.

“It [the mud] went up to around the 1.5m mark and kept ramping up.”

Mr Barnett said he could not see either Mr Welsh or his machinery, and a co-worker stated “we are going to have to start digging for him”.

He said the searchers were mindful of the need to be careful while digging with their machinery, as “we didn’t want to hurt him”.

Mr Barnett said he could not recall how long they searched for, but “it seemed forever”.

The inquest heard that eventually the searchers spotted a light, which they realised was the interior light from Mr Welsh’s “crippled” loader.

“It [the loader] was not in the shape it was supposed to be … it’s hard to describe,” Mr Barnett said.

The inquest, before Coroner Simon Cooper, is investigating Mr Welsh’s death and the deaths of two other miners, Craig Gleeson, 45, and Alistair Lucas, 25, who died at the Queenstown mine six weeks earlier when a platform they were working on collapsed.

All three were employed by Barminco, the company contracted to perform the underground work at the mine.

Mr Barnett explained to the inquest the consistency of the mud where Mr Welsh was working. He said it was “wet dirt” that could not hold shape.

He recalled beginning his shift with Mr Welsh, and going underground together in the site’s “troop carrier”.

Mr Barnett said Mr Welsh was a “very experienced bogger operator”.

The inquest also heard from the site’s project engineer Cameron Schultz, who had been working at the site in days prior to the incident.

He said the dirt was “very wet and not standing”, so there had been a need for fresh dirt.

But he said the condition of the mud “was not very concerning”, and agreed that both Copper Mines of Tasmania and Barminco had a strong focus on safety.

The inquest is continuing.