[ISL] "Bell Island collapse not an if, but a when, engineer says"

[rfmcdonald]

CBC News reports about what may be an impending disaster on Newfoundland's Bell Island.

A retired mining engineer is worried about what could happen when — not if — the roof of the Bell Island mine collapses.

Peter Young's house in Portugal Cove-St. Philip's, just west of St. John's, offers spectacular views of Bell Island, but he's concerned about what lurks beneath the bottom of Conception Bay.

Young told CBC Radio's On the Go this week that tunnels under the abandoned mines, going down as far as two kilometres, hold the potential for a large-scale disaster.

[. . .]

The method of mining that was used saw large pillars of rock installed to keep the roof of the mine up. About 35 per cent of the rock is left in its place while the rest was mined and taken out.

"But the problem really is that originally, the roof in the mine was quite safe. We're beginning to see failures occurring, and the failures are that the water level in the mine is now appearing to follow the tidal movements in Conception Bay," Young said.

"The effect of that is that clearly there's some failure occurring between the mine roof and the ocean floor. The question is how big is it? Is it going to grow, is it going to remain? We just don't know."