INNOVATION-July-August-2020

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the MERD competition. Its women’s team won first place overall, and its men’s team won second overall. Now, UBC’s team has created and hosted an international competition of its own in Canada. The team, with the generous support of its sponsors, hopes to encourage the development of new teams across Canada, enabling students to learn and apply fundamental skills in mine safety and rescue. BC’S MINE DISASTERS Devastating mining accidents are woven into our provincial history. On May 3, 1887, the worst mining disaster in BC’s history occurred in an underground coal mine in Nanaimo, killing 148 workers. Gas or dust in the No. 1 Esplanade Mine led to a pair of explosions shortly before 6:00 PM. Accounts of the recovery efforts in the days following the explosions describe how many fatalities were not caused by the blasts themselves, but by “afterdamp”—a toxic mixture of gases found in mines after an explosion. Only seven workers survived. The mine closed permanently in 1938.

Clegg and the team are participating in a hands-on underground mine rescue simulation, part of the Canadian International Student Mine Rescue Competition. This international competition, the first of its kind in Canada, took place on February 21 and 22 at UBC, and attracted competitors from mining schools in both Canada and the USA. The underground rescue simulation was just one of five events in a competition that also challenged teams to demonstrate fire skills, first aid, equipment inspection and repair, and general mine rescue theory. UBC’s Underground Mine Rescue Team, formed in 2011, quickly rose to prominence in international competition. In its first year of competition, it placed first overall at the Mine Emergency Response Development (MERD) competition—a prominent, biennial mine rescue competition held in Colorado. The UBC team, made up of undergraduate students from UBC’s Norman B. Keevil Institute of Mining Engineering, has consistently placed in the top three overall in the MERD competition. In 2019, UBC entered two teams in

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