Heavy equipment simulator trains miners to avoid accidents

Efforts are underway in Sudbury to address the reality that an increasing number of miners are being killed in transportation-related accidents in Ontario.

Workplace Safety North, an agency supported by the premiums industries pay to the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, affirms there's an increase in these kinds of fatalities.

As mining has evolved to include more and bigger machinery, transportation-relatedfatalities have risen to 38 per cent of all deaths in the industryas of 2011.

Those include accidents under and above ground.

Staff at the Northern Centre for Advanced Technology hope a recently acquired heavy equipment simulator will result in better-trained operators.

NORCAT director of training and development Jason Bubba saidminers can now practice emergency procedures safely.

On the simulator, we can train them on various dangerous situations, he said.

[When] things like a fire hazard occurs ... [we can] train them how to put out that fire and train that muscle memory. How does someone actually react to a brake failure while they're in that piece of equipment?

The simulator will be stationed in Sudbury for the next year.Then, it will travel to mines around northeastern Ontario for training at other sites.