Workers repair the road leading to the Donkin coal mine in Donkin, N.S., Monday, Dec. 13, 2004. Nova Scotia’s Department of Labour says it has issued a stop work order following a fire at the Donkin coal mine in Cape Breton. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan
HALIFAX – A precautionary stop-work order is in effect at the Donkin coal mine, in Cape Breton, after a fire over the weekend.
Nova Scotia’s Labour Department issued a tweet Sunday night confirming the order, following the incident at the underground mining operation. The department released few details but said there were no injuries and no workers were underground at the time of the fire.
Cape Breton councillor James Edwards, who represents the municipal district where the mine is located, says he was informed of the fire by mine officials.
“They got back to me and said there was a problem with one of the (mine’s) belts and that they were following all of the protocols to address it,” Edwards, who also sits on the mine’s community liaison committee, said in an interview Monday.
He said he didn’t know what specific piece of equipment was involved in the fire.
“Later the mine (officials) said the situation was under control. I asked for confirmation on whether the fire was out and they came back to me to say that “˜yes the fire is out.'”
Neither the mine’s owner, Kameron Coal Management Ltd., nor representatives from the Department of Labour were immediately available for comment on Monday.
The mine resumed operations in mid-September after it was shuttered in March 2020 amid slumping coal prices and roof collapses that led to repeated government stop-work orders.
In January, it was revealed that Kameron Coal had been cited for a lengthy list of safety violations since the operation restarted. Violations included an unqualified employee doing electrical work, use of an unapproved ventilation-control device, and the improper storage of compressed-gas cylinders.
Although Edwards couldn’t speak to the severity of the fire, he said he was immediately concerned when he was first alerted to it.
“When I heard there was smoke coming from the mine everything stopped, that’s for sure, until we made sure that everything was under control,” he said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 1, 2023.
