Body of 2nd missing Quebec miner found

Hope of finding any survivors of a mining accident was fading Monday as officials in northwestern Quebec confirmed they had found the body of the second of three men missing in a flooded mine shaft.

Authorities confirmed the body belonged to Bruno Goulet, 36, one of the three miners trapped hundreds of metres below ground level Friday night.

The tragedy occurred Friday night at the Metanor gold mine in Bachelor Lake, just outside the hamlet of Desmaraisville.

On Monday morning, the body of Dominico Bollini, 44, a father of two was found.

Officials continued to pump water out of the mine Monday night, but acknowledged the chances of finding Marc Guay, 31, alive were slim.

Repairing mine shaft

The three had descended into a mine shaft Friday night to do repair work on the shaft.

Not having heard from the miners in some time, officials raised the elevator to bring the workers back to the surface — only to find the elevator was empty, and the shaft had flooded with water, said Metanor's superintendent of human resources, Pierre Bernaquez. The emergency hatch on top of the elevator had been opened, he said.

He said officials believe the men were caught somewhere between the 11th and 12th levels of the gold mine at a depth of some 500 meters.

To have survived from that area, Bernaquez said, they would have had to plunge through 50 metres of water and, in darkness, found an air pocket.

Officials have likened the flooded mine to a small lake.

'[Mining] is still a dangerous job,' —Pierre Turgeon, Quebec Workplace Health and Safety Board spokesman

"I don't know. Unless you're a professional diver, to achieve that feat, especially in the dark, it's very unlikely they would have been able to survive," Bernaquez said.

He said it is still unclear what might have happened to the workers, considered experienced miners.

He said it is normal to have water in a mine shaft because they run past the water table. But when there is flooding in an area where miners are working — an alarm is supposed to go off.

Should not have been water

Bernaquez said he's not sure what caused the flooding in this case adding there has been no time  to investigate since everyone has been working full-time to find the miners.

He said the workers, families and co-workers were being provided counselling.

All three of the men are fathers, with a total of five children, Bernaquez said.

Goulet and Bollini both work for Metanor Resources, while Guay is an employee of mining contractor Montali.

There should not have been water in the area where the miners were working, said Marcel Charest, a spokesman for Quebec's Workplace Health and Safety Board (CSST), which is investigating along with Quebec provincial police.

Charest said the workers were repairing the walls of the mine shaft, which had been closed in the early 1990s, but that the water had been pumped out of the mine three years ago.

Charest said it seems the workers were aiming to descend to the 13th and lowest level of the mine, but that there was water all the way up to the 10th level.

He said it is unclear why that was the case.

Installing pumps time consuming

Bernaquez said the painstaking effort to remove the water from hundreds of metres below ground level posed its own set of challenges.

"It takes time to install pumps so far underground," Bernaquez said.

And before the pumps started working, electricians had to quickly put in new wiring while following strict security regulations to avoid further accidents, he said.

A dangerous job

Despite technological advances, mining remains a dangerous job, said CSST spokesman Pierre Turgeon.

"There are dangers when you go into a mine — there are air quality problems; you’re using explosives; you are using machinery and you are going deep underground."

 Between 2004 and 2008, there were 17 deaths in mines in Quebec (including five in gold mines), and more than 4,000 injuries, Turgeon said.

Three rescue teams are currently working at the Metanor mine with the support of the CSST, Turgeon said.

All mining operations at the facility, which is about 600 kilometres northwest of Montreal, have been suspended.