Some hazards in mining arrive with plenty of warning. Others build quietly in the background. Fire and explosion risks are often like that. They sit inside ordinary equipment, familiar work areas and routine jobs, right up until the moment they are very much no longer routine.
That is what makes the latest NSW Resources Regulator report worth a proper look. The assessment program covered 46 surface and underground coal mines and focused on fire or explosion principal hazard management plans, along with fixed plant and structures. It was not just a box-ticking exercise. The regulator reviewed how critical controls were actually being managed across areas such as hazardous area management, shutdown and isolation, mechanically generated heat, fire detection and suppression, electrical protection systems and spontaneous combustion.
The findings were hardly reassuring. Across the 46 mines, the regulator recorded 34 findings with issues identified. The highest number related to hazardous area management, followed by electrical protection systems, mechanically generated heat and shutdown or isolation controls. Fire detection and suppression were the only assessed areas where no issues were recorded. That sounds like a small comfort until you remember that detection and suppression only come into play once the thing you were hoping to prevent has already started.
In other words, the problem is not just fire itself. It is everything that can quietly lead to it: friction, heat, dust, electrical faults, poor isolation, weak hazardous area controls and equipment that has been asked to keep soldiering on long after it should have been pulled up and checked. Mines rarely get into trouble because nobody knows fire is dangerous. They get into trouble because hazards become normal, small control failures are tolerated, and everyday equipment stops getting the respect it deserves. This is exactly the kind of drift the report is warning against.
Incidents show the risk is far from theoretical. In Queensland, Anglo American’s Grosvenor mine was suspended after an underground coal gas ignition incident in 2024. Then, at Moranbah North, Anglo reported a small contained ignition in the goaf in 2025, prompting the controlled withdrawal of all personnel to the surface. At BMA’s Peak Downs mine in 2025, a worker suffered burns in a diesel ignition event near a bulldozer fuel source. The Queensland Coal Mines Inspectorate has also reported that fires on heavy mobile equipment remain a persistent problem, with no reducing trend observed and dozers and rear dumps continuing to feature in most incidents.
NSW has had its own reminders. The Resources Regulator’s investigation into the Perilya Southern Operations fire at Broken Hill found the January 2025 underground incident occurred when polyurethane foam was used to fill a void, triggering the evacuation of 46 workers and trapping five people in a fresh air base. The regulator said the event reflected a systemic breakdown in contractor management, hazard awareness, procedural compliance and risk governance. That is a sobering phrase, but also a useful one. Big incidents are rarely caused by one dramatic mistake. More often they are built out of layers of smaller failures that were either missed, tolerated or never properly understood in the first place.
That is really the lesson running through all of this. A worn roller. A drifting belt. Heat where heat should not be. An isolation point nobody quite trusts. A hazardous area that is poorly defined or badly signed. A permit signed off in a hurry. None of these sound dramatic on its own, which is usually the problem. By the time a fire or ignition event makes itself known the opportunities to prevent it have often come and gone.
The safest operations are the ones that keep checking the fundamentals, keep fixing the boring stuff and give equipment and structures the attention they deserve. Do not let familiarity breed complacency. Review the basics often, act early on small issues and make sure routine hazards are treated with the same discipline as major ones because good fire prevention starts long before anything goes wrong.
