35% of emergencies and 27% of fatalities: the cost of detecting late

The documented statistics on geomechanical failures in underground mining between 2005 and 2023, according to the Agencia Nacional de Minería (ANM, Colombia’s National Mining Agency, 2024), are clear: 35% of operational emergencies and 27% of fatalities in the sector originate in geomechanical failures. It is not a marginal risk. It is one of the most consistent causes of serious emergencies in the industry, sustained over almost two decades of records.

What those statistics do not tell, and it is the question that should truly worry any operation, is how long a critical condition exists before it becomes an emergency. A geomechanical failure does not appear from one moment to the next. There is a window, sometimes of hours, sometimes of days, in which the condition is already detectable but not yet catastrophic. The difference between a routine inspection and an emergency is not always the condition of the ground. Often it is the speed between the signal and the response.

Here is the trap many operations fall into: having geomechanical controls is not the same as having response speed. An operation can comply with the monitoring protocol, periodic inspections, technical reports and risk management guides, and still miss the window between when the condition becomes detectable and when someone interprets it as critical. Regulatory compliance protects you legally. It does not necessarily protect you operationally if the latency between signal and interpretation is still days instead of hours.

In your operation, how long can a critical geomechanical condition exist today before someone with the authority to act learns that it exists?

Source

Agencia Nacional de Minería [ANM]. (2024). Guía técnica para la gestión de los riesgos mineros causados por fallas geomecánicas. Vicepresidencia de Seguimiento, Control y Seguridad Minera; Grupo de Seguridad y Salvamento Minero. anm.gov.co