What We Can Learn from Australia’s Recent Explosions

The explosion at the Endeavour Mine in Cobar has shaken the mining and investigation community, two lives lost, one seriously injured, and a familiar story emerging. A blast underground, in the early hours of the morning, detonated while workers were still down there (The Guardian, 2025). The details are still unfolding, but what we already know sounds uncomfortably familiar: a failure in timing, communication, or clearance that turned a routine operation into tragedy.

For those of us who work in fire and explosion investigation, this is not an isolated event. In the last couple of years alone, Australia has seen several significant explosions, from chemical plants to open-cut mines and each one offers a hard-earned lesson about risk, systems, and how we investigate them.

View of Endeavour Mine, location of the Cobar Mine Explosion that occurred on 28 October 2025.

Cobar Mine, NSW (2025)

The Cobar incident took place just before 4 a.m., deep underground at the Endeavour Mine. Reports suggest that blasting charges went off while three people were still inside the work zone, killing two and seriously injuring another (News.com.au, 2025). Operations were immediately shut down and investigations are now underway into the safety and communication systems that allowed this to happen (The Australian, 2025). At face value, it appears to be a blast-timing or procedural failure, the sort that should be impossible in a controlled mining environment. But these events rarely come down to one mistake. They’re often the result of multiple layers of small, compounding failures: a missed check, a delayed communication, a moment of fatigue. For investigators, that means looking past the detonation itself and into the systems that enabled it, from how clearance was verified to whether anyone double-checked that process before firing.

Derrimut Chemical Factory, VIC (2024)

A year earlier, Melbourne’s western suburbs were covered in a thick plume of black smoke when a chemical factory in Derrimut exploded and burned for hours. Firefighters described it as one of the most intense industrial fires they’d ever faced (ABC News, 2024). Drums of flammable liquids launched into the air; neighbouring factories were evacuated.

This incident speaks to a different kind of risk, one that doesn’t come from a single moment of ignition, but from the slow build-up of vulnerabilities inside chemical storage and handling facilities. Reports suggest the site stored large volumes of solvents and other flammables (Reuters, 2024). The question for investigators isn’t just what caught fire first, but why it was able to escalate.

Explosion at Derrimut Chemical Factory occurred in 2024.

In scenes like this, we have to look at how materials were stored, whether incompatible chemicals were kept apart, how ventilation and suppression systems were maintained, and whether fire-protection design matched the actual hazard. These investigations are complex because they sit at the intersection of chemistry, engineering, and human error, but they’re essential for preventing repeat disasters.

Mt Arthur Mine unplanned detonation.

Mt Arthur Mine, NSW (2024)

Another case, quieter but no less significant, happened in the Hunter Valley, when a bulldozer set off an old explosive that had misfired in a previous blast at the Mt Arthur South coal mine (Daily Telegraph, 2024). The unplanned detonation left a crater and damaged heavy equipment, but by luck, no one was injured. Misfires are one of the most underestimated hazards in blasting operations. They sit dormant, often unnoticed, until the right conditions align, and then they go off. For investigators, these cases highlight the importance of traceability and documentation. Who cleared the blast zone? How was it verified? Were there proper systems to mark and isolate areas containing old charges? A single missed record can become the difference between a safe site and another fatality.

What These Events Tell Us

When you look at these incidents side by side, they start to tell a larger story. Whether it’s an underground blast, a surface misfire, or a chemical detonation, the themes are consistent: human factors, system weaknesses, and missed opportunities to catch small failures before they compound.

Procedural compliance is only as strong as the people applying it. In both Cobar and Mt Arthur, the issue seems to come down to verification, the moment when someone must say “yes, it’s clear” or “no, it’s not.” In Derrimut, it’s about long-term complacency: storing hazardous materials without fully accounting for how they behave under stress. These are organisational problems as much as they are technical ones.

From an investigative standpoint, this is where the scientific method laid out in NFPA 921 becomes vital. Every hypothesis, whether about ignition, timing, or system failure must be tested and backed by evidence, not assumption. It also reinforces the need for early scene preservation. Explosions destroy evidence by nature, but what remains, burn direction, debris distribution, electrical damage can tell the story if we get there fast enough and record it systematically.

And finally, there’s the cultural piece. Time and again, major incidents reveal a lack of reporting, weak communication, or an underestimation of near-misses. The 1980 CSA Mine fire in Cobar, for example, found that unreported hazards and poor risk assessment were major contributors to loss of life (NSW Resources Regulator, 2025). Forty-five years later, we’re still having the same conversations.

Looking Ahead

Every explosion investigation should do more than determine what happened, it should drive change. These recent events remind us that the science and the systems have to go hand in hand. It’s not enough to know how an explosion occurred; we also have to understand why people and organisations allowed the conditions for it to exist.

The goal isn’t just technical accuracy it’s prevention. Because every time we piece together another investigation, we’re building a collective memory for the industry. And if we use that memory well, maybe the next story out of Cobar won’t be another tragedy, but a case study in how lessons were finally learned.

References

The Guardian (2025). Cobar underground mine explosion kills two people.

News.com.au (2025). Man and woman killed in underground mine explosion in Cobar.

The Australian (2025). Two miners dead after underground explosion at Endeavour Mine.

ABC News (2024). Derrimut chemical explosion injures firefighters and residents.

Reuters (2024). Explosion at Melbourne factory ignites massive blaze.

Daily Telegraph (2024). Unplanned explosion at Mt Arthur coal mine under investigation.

NSW Resources Regulator (2025). Learning from Disasters: CSA Mine, Cobar (1980).

NFPA 921 (2024). Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations.