From the advent of large scale mining in the UK from the 1750s, major incidents and disasters started to occur. With time, and after some repeats, lessons were learned and control measures developed to reduce the numbers and severity of incidents to a minimum.With the passage of time, most of these events are now beyond the memory of the current workforce and management.
The reasons for certain control measures and practices have been lost and there is a danger that complacency might set in, despite the fact that the hazards largely still exist.It is important that the lessons are not lost. This paper will seek to examine a number of past methane ignition, coal dust explosion and fire incidents, where the lessons learned are still relevant. CITATION:Leeming, J R, 2019. Avoiding repeat incidents learning the lessons of the past, in Proceedings Australian Mine Ventilation Conference 2019, pp 314 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).