Lessons learnt from Indian inundation disasters: An analysis of case studies

Mining industry, has been a topic of increasing attention in the last few decades. The disasters of the past years due to different causes push for a moment of reflexivity about learning from accidents. The increased interest in improving the safety at workplace has been driven mainly by a series of recent mining disasters that have occurred in India as well as in the rest of the world. Disasters in Indian coal mines have caused havoc in the past. In recent times also, there had been 7 disasters since the year 2000 killing 144 persons. The worst disaster ever in Indian mining history is the Chasnala disaster due to inundation in 1975, killing 375 persons. But unfortunately we have learnt very little from these past disasters. The authors in this paper had tried to identify the thrust area along with the gaps in our learning system, which need more attention for maintaining safety by analyzing the past three disasters due to inrush of water in Indian coal mines including Chasnala coal mine disaster, greatest disaster of India mining industry and tried to highlight the weaknesses in the system and key lessons learnt from them.