The risk reducing of miners evacuation in case of an accident with aerological impact

Abstract

Displacement of miners along emergency escape routes involves various types of risk. First of all, displacement of miners occurs rapidly in order to have time gap to carry out the evacuation within the operational time according to the emergency recovery plan. Further, the evacuation is carried out along routes that arranged far worse compared to that ones for the displacement of miners to their workplaces as well as escape routes provided with emergency ways. Further, strict compliance with regulations of the Safety Regulations for displacement along the gassy area of the route until reaching the nearest fresh stream and, after that, displacement exclusively along the clean stream, in some cases significantly increases the route length. For example, in case, when switching points as duplicate self-rescuers could be used, the exit during the operational time of the emergency recovery plan could be unreachable, while organizing of the second switching point is prohibited by the Safety Regulations, etc. In addition, the risk of emergency evacuation is due to the fact that, unlike classical route tasks, routes are built not “from point to point”, but from the initial set (the position of the emergency recovery plan) to the final one (the set of exits to the surface of mine shafts involved for evacuation). The individual risk differs for certain groups of miners evacuated from the workings according to the position of emergency recovery plan. Therefore, the study is devoted to the elaboration of a method reducing the risk of emergency evacuation with a probable (within acceptable limits) violation of the requirements of the Safety Regulations as well as correcting these regulations. Strict compliance with regulations of the Safety Regulations is able to complicate the emergency evacuation process. In modern mines provided with long and complicated ventilation networks, due to an exogenous fire outbreak, large gassy areas could be formed, which are, able to cause complications during emergency evacuation. Bypassing these areas means increasing the evacuation time that could lead to the exceeding of operational time according to the emergency recovery plan An algorithm for correction of escape routes is proposed, which, provided that real information about possible escape routes is obtained by means of an emergency simulation, will make it possible to shorten these routes, although they contain clean and gassy areas alternately. The algorithm is recommended for the discussion purpose in order to correct some regulations of the Safety Regulations. Keywords: emergency recovery plan, mine ventilation network, gassy area, emergency escape routes.