The public is welcome to watch the Provincial Mine Rescue and First Aid Competition that gets underway Thursday morning in Williams Lake with a Zone Competition.
“Every mine site in the Province of BC under code regulations are required to have a mine rescue team,” said Aaron Frost, chief task judge for the North-South Central Zone Competition.
“So these teams train for site-specific emergency response from a basic level. What we do with the competition is we actually bring all those teams together for friendly competition. What I mean by friendly is actually more of a learning experience than a competition.”
“For those that are involved in mining they ‘ve seen it before, but for those that don’t know this is a brotherhood. These guys come together. They’re shaking hands; they’re not like the old school hockey teams where they’re beating each other up. They love to hang out together and the learning experience for these guys is some of the most amazing things that they can get especially the smaller mines.”
Frost adds it has been a lot of years since they have been in the hometown of a mine, and that Gibraltar is definitely one of the top teams out there.
Thursday will feature Northern (Red Chris Mine, Mount Milligan, and two teams from Conuma Coal Resources, Wolverine and Brule) and Southern Teams (Gibraltar Mine, Highland Valley Copper from Logan Lake, Copper Mountain out of Princeton, and Willow Creek) competing in four different tasks including a first aid task, fire task, rope task, and a bench task.
The winners who will be announced later in the evening will advance to Saturday’s provincials.
“More than anything we’d just love to see the public come down and check out what’s going on,” Frost said.
“If you’ve got young kids that are looking at working in the future, mining is a great paying job and mine rescue is amazing. It is so much fun. If you talk to any one of our guys out here competing tomorrow you’ll see a smile on their face all day long.”
The competition runs Thursday in the Williams Lake Fire Department and United Concrete area from 7:30 am until 4 pm. Parking is available at the Wholesale Club and Canadian Tire parking lot.