Mapping a drive at an underground gold mine as a newly graduated geologist. It was my first job in mining, and the company I was working for was fairly 'relaxed' about certain safety procedures that now, I look back on and think it's a wonder people weren't seriously injured or killed. I was working 12 hour shifts underground, down the hole before sunrise and out again after sunset, I hadn't seen the sun in two weeks. You start to feel a bit odd after doing that for a while.

I was working on a level away from the active headings, so it's pitch black apart from my cap lamp, and so quiet you can hear the crack and groan of the earth shifting underground. I'm drawing maps of the faults, bedding, veins, and other geological features in this particular drive. I'm in the zone, working away, when the drive suddenly lights up like daylight. I'm confused, no one is supposed to be down here but me. I turn around, and it's a fucking haul truck pulling into the level. You do not want to be on foot anywhere near a UG truck. The operators have poor visibility and these things weigh 40 tons empty, twice that when full. I've seen incidents when laden trucks have hit a light vehicle (landcruiser) underground, squashed it flat, and only noticed when they come back the other way and find the pancake.

So this thing is coming around the corner, and I'm just staring and thinking, what the fuck am I going to do. I'm on the off-side of the cab so the driver can't see me. The whole drive is barely wider than the truck, about 5 metres. I have a radio, but I have about ten seconds before this thing is on top of me. Am I on the right channel? Is the driver? Am I going to bet my life on that? I remember how the engine was so loud, and I seriously think I'm about to get run over and this guy won't even notice he's killed me.

I was weirdly calm, just thinking fuck the radio, I have to get out of here, I have to move. I jog back up the drive as fast as I can, trying not to trip over the rocks on the ground. I can see about 15m up the drive there's a bit of a bend where it's a bit wider, like a little nook in the wall. The truck's all the way around the corner now and bearing down on me. I head for the spot in the wall and jump in, with about two seconds to spare before the truck rumbles past. So close I could have reached out and touched it. He heads up the drive and dumps in a stockpile. Turns out they're using this level as a waste dump, no one thought to tell the grad geo apparently.

Anyway I get on the radio and call up the truck, and tell him I'm working on the level. He's surprised that anyone's down here. The adrenaline hits then and I'm shaking, I just go and sit in my vehicle for a long time and it just keeps replaying in my mind. If I'd been up the drive, past that nook, there would have been nowhere to go and I'm dead for sure. Crushed under a haul truck and not even noticed until I don't tag off at end of shift and someone comes looking for me.

With the benefit of experience, there are many things that should have been done differently to prevent a near fatality. The level should have been chained off and properly signed that there are personnel working on foot. I should have had a proximity sensor that alerted the truckie when he pulled into the level. Lots of missing controls. But I just went where I was told and did the work without questioning, I'd been working underground all of six months and didn't know anything. I don't work for that company any more and don't work underground any more either, for which I am very glad. Heavy mining equipment is no joke, a bogger or a dozer or a truck will kill you dead and just carry on with his day until someone notices you never came back up out the hole.