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Nearing blaze disrupts operations at Eagle Mine and AurMac exploration project; Victoria Gold remobilizes crews on Aug. 1 North of 60 Mining News - August 1, 2023
The Rancheria Mountain fire seen in early July.
To ensure the safety of its Eagle Gold Mine employees, Victoria Gold Corp. July 30 announced that operations would be partially evacuated due to the recent wildfire activity near the operation. At the same time, neighboring Banyan Gold Corp. is paring down its gold exploration activities due to its proximity to the fire.
"The safety of our employees is our highest priority," said Victoria Gold President and CEO John McConnell. "As a result of wildfire activity proximal to Eagle and in consultation with the Yukon Wildland Fire Management team, we made the precautionary decision to evacuate non-essential employees. A volunteer contingent of employees remains staged nearby the mine site to operate and maintain critical operational assets."
On the evening of July 29, a partial evacuation of the Eagle Gold mine commenced and was successfully and safely completed the following day.
The company has stated that employees who have voluntarily remained on location will continue to run heap leach pumping activities – whereas mining and stacking operations have been suspended until further notice.
As of July 30, the East McQuesten fire is currently approximately 4,000 meters from the Eagle Gold mine and is being actively fought by the Yukon Wildland Fire Management response team.
The company has provided support through various heavy equipment to assist the fire response effort.
In accordance with Victoria's emergency response plan, measures have been taken to protect the infrastructure at Eagle. The company will provide additional updates in due course.
In a similar fashion, Banyan Gold Corp. chose to alleviate concerns due to the proximity of the wildfires.
Though the Yukon Government has recommended evacuations for Victoria's Eagle Gold mine and nearby placer operations, Banyan says that its camps are not in the alert zone and will not be evacuated. However, the access roads to the company's Nitra property are included in the alert zone.
"The safety of our employees, contractors, our neighbours and the community is our top priority," said Banyan Gold President and CEO Tara Christie. "All our employees and infrastructure are currently safe."
While its primary exploration properties are fine as of now, out of caution and for the safety of its personnel, Banyan has suspended prospecting and soil sampling activities at the Nitra property. Additionally, the company has decided to wrap up the phase-one exploration at AurMac with the completion of 24,556 meters of drilling this summer.
"With the infrastructure at Banyan, we have the ability to execute drill programs through December so we can constructively use this time to continue to plan our Phase II drill and exploration programs with the benefit of additional results from our Phase I program," Christie added.
As a benefit of its closeness, Banyan says it has opened its excess space in camp to evacuated workers from Victoria.
As the company continues to monitor the situation with several fires in the Mayo area, all of which are currently located more than 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the AurMac operational area, the Yukon explorer is continuing core logging and cutting, and regional exploration in areas currently not proximal to wildfires, and the onsite prep lab remains operational.
"We will continue to actively monitor the situation and adapt our plans," said Christie.
"We would like to thank the Yukon Wildland Fire Management for their assistance during this time and their continued efforts to manage and respond to wildfire activity in the territory," finished McConnell.
AUGUST 1 UPDATE: Victoria announced that due to progress made in managing the fire, the company has begun remobilizing crews back to the Eagle Mine and expects normal operations to resume in the coming days.
“We would like to thank the firefighters on the ground who have made progress in recent days managing the East McQuesten fire,” said McConnell. “We will continue to monitor the situation with the safety of our employees as our highest priority.”
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