Middlemount in Flood

In January 2008, there was a lot of flooding in the Bowen Basin of Queensland. Large parts of the town of Emerald went underwater, and several mines flooded, or came close to doing so. The most spectacular of these was Ensham, in which one of their draglines went underwater.

These floods caused BMA (BHP-Billiton-Mitsubishi Alliance) to declare force majeure for a lot of their mines. This was a primary cause of the price of hard coking coal jumping to US$300 / t for this Japanese Financial Year.

These photos are from the Middlemount mine. Here there are several underwater trucks, and some photos of an excavator being recovered by a very brave / stupid operator who swam out to the machine. Look to see just how close the excavator came to toppling over on the operator's side.