"it was only by pure luck that 100 lives weren’t lost..."

This is a photo taken from the aluminium company bus transporting workers to their plant. It traveled through an active brush fire area.

Natural disasters such as tornados, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc have occurred affecting aluminium plants. The Aluminium Plant Safety Blog has posted stories on how an aluminium plant was affected or how they prepared for natural disasters. This story is a little different. The following story began a number weeks earlier with brush fires that had spread around the alumina refinery. Some buildings on the alumina refinery’s property were burned down. That story was going to be posted in the near future. Then this story occurred and we decided that this story should be posted first. Here it is.

“We believe the behavior of aluminium company management was dangerous, workers were pressured to get on those buses and head into a situation which was still an unfolding disaster for the whole region,” said the national union secretary.

“Members feared for their lives, they believe the assurances of managers that the routes and the site were safe was wrong. There was no discussion about how they would exit the job, no plan they knew of if the fire took hold at the refinery.”

Workers said they were told to get on the work buses early one morning during the week of January 10, 2016, leaving from towns south and north - less than 10 hours after fires had destroyed a nearby town.

Members worried about asthmatic conditions were told to use a mask, while workers distressed over their safety received either bland assurances or sarcasm from one manager. One aluminium company official is believed to have gained clearance for one bus and a convoy of workers’ cars to go through a police roadblock in a town 20 kilometers away without any emergency vehicle escort by wrongly stating they were “essential personnel.”

Their route passed around the still-smoking ruins of a town, just 3km from the alumina refinery.

“We were told it was safe and the fire was under control,” said one plant worker, among over 100 workers on-site over a two day period.

“Arriving at work with no escort, nothing could have been further from the truth. The place was on fire and there was no (clear) way out.”

The phone network was down, some buildings were smoke-filled, no emergency services were present and there was fire in surrounding paddocks.

On one night no emergency escort was provided out from the alumina refinery for buses carrying about 80 workers.

The road was blocked at a damaged bridge, the buses were forced to reverse into a paddock still on fire while a site manager escorting in his own vehicle found another route out.

The journeys in and out lengthened the working day to 16 hours, with employees dropped off late one night being told to re-join the bus at 6am next day for another shift. The union has written to the federal government department of mines, the aluminum company’s senior management and state government officials asking for an independent investigation into the aluminium company’s decision to operate the alumina refinery site through the emergency and how it handled transport.

Local government officials backed the union’s calls. "Those people spent well nigh on 12 hours in fear of their lives," the local government offical said

.

"This is just not good enough and there is clearly a case to answer here."

______________________another media story__________________________________

The national union blasted a mining company for allegedly putting the lives of its workers at risk by requiring them to return to work at the height of the deadly bushfires.

The company’s alumina refinery is located about three kilometers from a town, which has recently been affected by massive bushfires.

The national union’s state secretary said workers were pressured to work despite unsafe conditions. The union insisted 100 of the mining company’s workers were bussed through the fire zone without any escort.

“They have shown no regard for their safety and welfare and it was only by pure luck that 100 lives weren’t lost as a result,” quoted the national union’s state secretary saying.

A government official for the region called for an independent inquiry into how the company managed the safety of its workers at the height of the fire, as reported by local television news.

“Those people spent well nigh on 12 hours in fear of their lives,” said the government official.

“This is just not good enough and there is clearly a case to answer here.”

The company rejected claims that the employees’ lives were put to risk, explaining that staffing levels were reduced to about a third and all transportation of workers in and out of the refinery were only undertaken after receiving permission from authorities. They also said buses transporting the workers were escorted by the Department of Fire and Emergency personnel.

The Aluminium Plant Safety Blog first offers our thoughts and prayers to all of the people who were displaced by the fires. We also acknowledge that many, many people lost all of their possessions in the brush fire that destroyed numerous towns around the alumina fire. We hope that those who lost all will be able to rebuild their lives.

Here is a photo of one of the hundreds of homes which were destroyed by the brushfire.

Now onto the accusations, which some alumina refinery managers placed their workers in unsafe conditions. The accusations are the reason why we chose not to name the company nor their location. The plant workers have accused some aluminium company managers of forcing them to travel to their place of employment through hazardous conditions. The story states that the aluminium company had permission from government authorities to travel with escort through an area where brush fires were occurring. At some point the aluminium company bus traveled the previous route but without an escort. It is that action that was the basis of the complaint(s). We assume that brush fires around this plant are not a unique occurrence. In the future the plant should develop guideline to never knowingly place their workers in harm’s way. The APSB have heard of some companies that take the decision away from their management on whether or not a plant should operate when facing a natural disaster. They allow the local, state, or federal governments to make the decision for them.

Please comment.