Page 25 Mines will practice a stench drill with stench gas released as a warn ing that an incident has occurred explains Rideout When the stench gas is released mine rescue teams carry out their mine rescue proce dures In addition to the drills at the local mine site every year mine rescue teams from each mine compete at the district level where they are evaluated on how well they carry out a simulated emergency There were eight district mine competi tions in 2019 The winner s went to the Provincial Mine Rescue Compe tition held at the Newmont Goldcorp Musselwhite Mine in the Red Lake District Mines have gotten safer over the years explains Rideout Fires are less frequent but a fre is still as in tense as fres of the past Even though the frequency of min ing emergencies are down training has continue to meet any emergen cy that may arise a mine That means practice is crucial to being ready to respond to an emer gency Rideout says As T ed Hanley the V icePresident of Ontario Mine Rescue points out in his presentation on the Ontario Mine Rescue in 1980 there were 100 mine rescue operation s in On tario By 1989 there were 40 and in 1999 there were 23 T oday there are about 1525 mine emergencies The District Rescue Ofcers them selves also provided trainin g to pro vide the latest most uptodate mine rescue trainin g so they in turn can provide about 60000 training hours to the mine rescue volunteers The District Ofcers are trained in ev erything related to emergency re sponse from EMS to First Aid Our guys are going to be in Hamilton to be trained in Advance First Aid by Wilson Medical says Rideout And later we are going to Georgia to be trained in responding to rock collapses Mines have gotten safer over the years Page 23