ESTEVAN - After two years of a break from competition, the Mine Rescue Team (MRT) at Westmoreland Mining Holdings LLC’s Estevan Mine is finally going back to a full-scale competition.
The 52nd annual Emergency Response Mine Rescue Skills Competition will be held June 4 as a culmination of Saskatchewan Mining Week at Prairieland Park in Saskatoon.
With just a few days remaining before they face other teams from across the province, Estevan MRT members are giving it all they have, not only to ensure they bring home the trophies but also to perfect their skills, reactions and teamwork to always perform to their best if a call for help ever comes.
For three weeks, they’ve been practising non-stop, going through dozens of possible scenarios, debriefing the experience and then going again. The Mercury was invited to join the team for their practice last Friday.
“That drill we just did, we had one person on a raised height that we had to lower down. We use a system called a skate block. Instead of coming straight down the skate block allows us to come out at an angle, so we can clear obstacles,” explained team captain Jessica Klarholm, adding that they used a six-man team for this drill, and the seventh member was utilized for extra gear locating.
‘Going for first in all events’
The competing team consists of seven members, including Klarholm, assistant captain Derek Choma, assistant captain Tyler Ursu, Tanner Weger-Brandow, Jamie Rosengren, Josiah Anderson and Brandon Schopp.
The entire MRT at Westmoreland Mining Holdings LLC’s Estevan Mine has 15 members, fully trained to help in case of a real emergency. The MRT practises once a month to maintain their skills, and then competing members have an intense three-week training right before. All drills are relevant to real-life emergencies, and the annual competition serves as a showcase of the talented and committed people who work at Westmoreland’s Estevan mine and for other mining companies across the province, giving them even more motivation to excel.
While the MRT had their monthly training going throughout the pandemic with a couple of exceptions at the very beginning, getting ready for the competition this time was a bit more stressful, as they didn’t have the intense practices for a while.
“Every year we get three weeks of training specifically for this. Missing those six weeks over those two years, you definitely feel it. But it didn't take long for us to mesh back together. We've got the skills, we just got to dust off the rest,” Klarholm said.
Cory Gibson, team co-ordinator and also the most senior member, said that out of seven members five joined the team during the past couple of years and will be competing for the first time.
“We've trained pretty hard and these three weeks of training we train even harder now. So, they're doing really, really good,” Gibson said.
While they practise for potential real-life situations, the competition setting adds a different twist to it.
“It's quite an elaborate operation,” Klarholm described the competition. “We have a scheduled timeline …We have to be at each event that we're competing in on the scheduled timeline. We have a certain amount of time to complete our problem. And then once our problem is done, we go right back to the room they call lockup, we talk to no one, we look at no one, we do nothing except maybe have a snack and then go back out to our next problem. We don't find out how we did until that evening. It is very high pressure, like a real-life kind of situation.”
“We have to move quite quickly or won't be very efficient,” Gibson added.
Just like in real life, participants never know what kind of challenges they are to face. They have a list of minimum equipment they have to bring, and then they have to find the best and safest way to approach the problem.
“Each event has its own co-ordinator. And this year, we have a few new co-ordinators, so we really don't know what to expect as far as how they set stuff up,” Klarholm said.
Anxiety is there ahead of the competition, yet team members had their goals set high and felt good about where their skills were.
“We're all tuning in all of our emotions right now. We were all over the place the first week. And then now we start tuning everything and getting comfortable with each other, getting comfortable with our scenarios, working as a team, so we're not talking as much,” said Ursu.
“We’ve been training for over two weeks now, so we're feeling pretty confident. We're hoping that we can take home a couple of first-place trophies. Last competition we got second in one event, so we're pretty pumped. This year we're going for first in all events. First overall.”
“We are nervous, of course. It’s something in the back of our mind, but we try to focus on training right now,” added Choma.
“Usually once a month, we're just honing our same skills. Whereas here we got to practise everything, and teamwork is more of a thing because every month you could be working with different people, whereas here we're working with the same group. So, we get in tune with each other where at competition time, we don't even have to talk to each other and we know what the other guys are doing because we've been training it for three straight weeks,” explained Weger-Brandow.
“It's exciting while we're training, but then once you get into the few days before it's pretty high stress. There's a lot that has to be done and done right,” Klarholm said.
Safety first
Guy Hiltz, who serves as the safety manager at the mine, said that having a professionally-trained and highly-efficient rescue team is a priority for the company.
“Westmoreland in general is very committed to having a mine rescue team. It gives us an extra sense of security in terms of helping our people if something was ever to happen,” Hiltz said. “In the past, we've spent a lot of money for mine rescue training in the hopes that we never have to use it.”
He added that the main point for the company is to ensure they have all means to help people at the workplace, and the competition is more of an exhibition of what the MRT knows.
“Certainly, we want to do well, we want to perform well. But it just gives us an opportunity to go up against some of our peers in the industry, showing them what we're capable of doing and then seeing what they're capable of doing,” Hiltz said. “It really gives our guys an opportunity to work under some of the pressures of what a real-life scenario may be, so it’s a good opportunity to hone their skills and to feel more comfortable with what their abilities are.”
Hiltz said the team always stays up to speed with practice and has a good grasp on what they need to be able to do to help their peers if a need comes. And the company is grateful for their work.
“I'm sure I speak for everybody within our company that has seen them in action and has seen the work that they do, not only on our site, but all our sites throughout our whole company. We're very grateful for the work that they do and how prepared they are when and if needed,” Hiltz said.
The other members of the bigger MRT at Westmoreland Mining Holdings LLC’s Estevan Mine are Hiltz, who oversees management of the team, co-ordinators Gibson and Stephen Kitchen, and rescuers Mathew Procyshyn, Lonnie Rooks, Matt Clausen, Travis Olver, Derek Mitchell and John Wells.
