Blaze at Ekati mine contained
No injuries reported at site's processing plant
Shane Magee
Northern News Services
Friday, June 24, 2016
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
A fire broke out at the Ekati Diamond Mine processing plant around 7 a.m. yesterday, Dominion Diamond Corporation stated in a news release.
The fire started during what the company called a "planned outage" at the plant.
The release goes on to state the company activated its incident management team and its emergency response team responded. The fire was contained, though the extent of the damage was not clear.
"All personnel were evacuated from the process plant and have been accounted for. At this time, no injuries have been reported," the news release issued yesterday morning states. Company spokesperson Laura Worsley-Brown stated in an e-mail to Yellowknifer that additional information would be released today.
The NWT Office of the Fire Marshal was notified of the fire, said acting fire marshal Anthony Ondrack.
"The investigation is still ongoing," he said yesterday afternoon, adding he had no information about the cause of the fire.
He said the fire marshal's office would send someone to the site only if a more detailed investigation is required than the one being carried out by company officials, or if the office is requested to attend.
Ekati is located about 300 km northeast of Yellowknife and is accessed by air in the summer.
The processing plant can handle 4.3 million tonnes of ore from the mine per year, according to Dominion's website. It processes the ore through crushing, screening and scrubbing to separate waste material from the diamonds. Ondrack said he was told the fire involved a "screen deck" at the plant but had no estimate of the damage.
It wasn't immediately clear how the fire may impact production at the mine.
"Our first priority is the safety and well-being of our workforce and of all the people involved in responding to this incident," the news release form Dominion stated.
The site had a workforce of 1,413 of the end of January last year, according to Dominion.
More than half of those are Dominion employees, while the remainder are contractors.
Earlier this month, Dominion reported changes to plans for production at the mine site that would allow construction of its Jay pipe to be pushed back. Ekati began production in 1998 and is both an above and underground mine.
