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Ice programs require planning and thinking ahead

There is no room for complacency when it comes to working on ice. “Ice is dangerous,” said Allan MacTavish, exploration manager, Magma Metals. “You always have to be thinking ahead.
Ice work 1
Magma Metals contracts a drilling company to come in and perform work.

There is no room for complacency when it comes to working on ice. 

“Ice is dangerous,” said Allan MacTavish, exploration manager, Magma Metals.

“You always have to be thinking ahead.”

During his 30-year mining career, MacTavish has been involved in about a dozen ice programs, including four with Magma Metals, a precious and base-metals junior miner located an hour north of Thunder Bay.

Despite the dangers of working on ice, there is no formal training “out there” other than what companies have created from their own safety guidelines, and what is provided in the common core training for diamond drillers.

The latter are a provincially approved series of modules offered at Kirkland Lake’s Northern College campus by the Apprenticeship, Workforce Development and Training Division of the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities.

MacTavish follows Ministry of Labour (MOL) protocols for working on ice and the environment. As well, he plans his ice drilling program months in advance, and submits them to the MOL. Government inspectors also visit the site monthly.

“The problem is that ice plans in mineral exploration tend to change, so you try to account for that,” he said, explaining that last winter’s warmer temperatures delayed the company’s drilling program by three weeks. “Environmentally, we follow to the letter and better. When you’re drilling on ice, you have to be very careful.”

In addition to going through the regulations with employees, Magma Metals hires formally trained drilling contractors, and as an added precaution, it contracts its ice preparation out to Fladgate Exploration Consulting Corp., a Thunder Bay junior with ice-building expertise.

Although there have been no ice-related deaths in the mining sector within the last 10 years, according to the Ministry of Labour (MOL), the health care, construction and industrial sectors have not been as fortunate.

There were 10 ice-related fatalities between 2000 and 2010 in those sectors: five in construction, four in industrial and one in health care.

Last year, gold exploration firm Conquest Resources was fined $130,000 for violations under the Occupational Health and Safety Act leading to the 2007 death of an independent contractor during the construction of an ice road. However, the MOL classified this fatality as construction-related.

The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat provides a document for fresh water called Safety Guide for Operations Over Ice upon which the MOL and companies reference when developing their own policies and procedures, according to Tim Merla, MOL’s northern regional engineer.

“We would assess their policies and procedures against our legislation and this guide,” he said. “A key aspect is to know the capacity of the ice and what weights you are putting on it.”

Under the Occupational Health and Safety Act, it is also the duty of the employer to provide information, instruction, supervision and proper safety equipment to workers for their protection.

Workplace Safety North’s consultant/trainer Kerry Willett said there is a lot of internal education going on within companies.

He believes every workplace should have a site-specific hazard analysis checklist filled out because it shows the company took the time to look at the work being done, did an analysis, came up with a hazard review and applied some controls.

As a veteran in the diamond drill industry, he touted the Best Practice for Building and Working Safely on Ice Covers in Alberta as a valuable resource for people working on ice.

Many winter drilling programs in Northern Ontario average six weeks, depending upon location and temperatures. Often, companies will contract out or begin preparing the area by flooding in order to build up a safe base for heavy machinery like diamond drills, bulldozers, and trucks.

Caitlin Jeffs, general manager of Fladgate Exploration, said over the last several years they have been making ice roads for various companies, including Magma Metals.

Jeffs’ experience came from her time spent at the Musselwhite Mine when she worked for Placer Dome, a prior owner.

“When we were at Musselwhite Mine, they brought people up to do safety courses for working on ice,” she said.

During that time, they taught people how to fall through and get out of ice in order to understand the experience. She had collected procedures from previous employers, the North West Territories, Alberta, Manitoba and the Canadian Diamond Drillers Association, and created her own guidebook.

Jeffs said they’ve added some extra safety components like checking the ice every eight metres instead of the maximum suggested 15 metres apart in rivers and 30 metres apart on a lake, as stated in the federal guide.

“Eight metres makes sense and it seems to be the width that the flood pump works,” she said. “You’ve got to drill that distance to flood, so you may as well measure and be safe.”

There are many complex aspects to consider when determining the load-bearing capacity of ice. The federal guide’s rule of thumb is one inch of clear blue ice for every 1,000 pounds. All guidelines in use in Canada are based on the “Gold’s formula,” a technical paper published by Dr. Lorne Gold in 1971. It is detailed in Section 4 of the Best Practice for Building and Working Safely on Ice Covers in Alberta.

Ice thickness will be impacted by location, air temperatures, ice formation and colour, wind speed, snow cover, currents, wave action, depth of the water body, fresh or swamp water, and solar radiation.

Clear blue ice is the strongest. White opaque ice (snow ice) has a relatively high air content and its strength depends on the density. Grey ice indicates water due to thawing, and black ice suggests something underneath is eating away at it, possibly a current or some ground condition creating air.

Ice growth rate depends upon the temperature. Jeffs said when flooding, the practice is to keep it under two inches a day. She explained the ice is white when flooding because it has some air in it.

“If you get the water from too far down, you’ll get bits of dirt in it, which weakens the ice. Then you’ll have to take half the amount of what you build as your strength.”

Other considerations are the type of load, whether it is stationary or moving, the speed at which loads are moving, the distance between the loads (machinery), and accumulationof drifted snow, which can act as aninsulator and slow ice growth.

A log book recording ice thickness, cracks and daily temperatures is part of monitoring changing ice conditions. The weather determines how frequent ice thickness will be tested.

“Once we have people on the ice, we’ll check it weekly, depending upon the weather,” Jeffs said. “If it starts warming up, we’ll check it every second day.” Rain may increase the frequency of testing because it leaches underneath and begins to weaken the ice.

Ensuring safety procedures are in place, proper equipment is provided, and that workers are trained to react in an emergency situation are all factors that can determine a successful ice program.

At the end of the day, safety is paramount, said MacTavish. “Find drilling companies that know how to drill on the ice that have all the safety protocols in place because the drilling company and ice-making company is your final safety. If they say they are moving off, you don’t argue.”