 High walls, benches, overhangs, drilling, blasting, mucking, end loaders, drag lines, trucks, shovels, strata, and haul road layouts. Just a few of the elements involved in mining. If your job puts you on or near high wall operations, you need to be especially careful. Time and time again, we are reminded of the dangers of high walls. Accidents and fatalities have demonstrated the need for extra awareness while working around high walls. It's your experience and training that can help to identify possible dangers. Let's listen as this experienced truck driver trains a new employee. Now pay some attention to the road. There are still some slick spots from last night's rain. Yeah, yeah, no problem. As I was saying, he should have seen it. Two outs in the ninth inning and two man on. He stood up to the plate like he owned it. Yeah, yeah Dave, I was there. I saw him and he looked great. But Dave, he struck out. We're coming up on a curve now. Just maintain the same throttle and let your momentum carry you through. You'll lose some speed but that's okay. Wait till next year with the little practice that boy's going to be. Whoa, look out for that rock. Wow, where did this thing come from? Looks like it fell off one of the haul trucks. It was brought up in the safety meeting last week. It shouldn't overload these monsters. I guess somebody wasn't paying attention. I don't think so. Looks like it come from right about there. Good thing nobody was here when it came down. Let's back this truck out of here and call the boss. I'm not too crazy about working under a high wall as a drop of those. The most common and frequent causes of rock falls are due to planes of weakness such as joints, faults, fractures, bedding plates, mud seams, and blast damage. Other causes of rock falls are freeze-thaw cycles, machinery working on higher benches or on top of the high wall, poor drainage of surface water away from the high wall, the overall slope face being too steep, and root growth of trees. The surest method of protection from rock fall hazards is recognizing and avoiding potentially dangerous areas. If you work near high walls, you need to be trained in high wall hazard recognition. Did you get a hold of the boss? Yeah, he sent an overloader to move this. He told us to stay here until it was clear. Do you see any loosens up there ready to come down? Nothing obvious. I would like to have him take a look at this area here. Looks like it might need some scaling. Here he comes now. You didn't run in the rock, did you? Nope, I saw it in time. Okay guys, we'll take it from here. You guys get back to work, okay? Oh, by the way, good job on spotting this. He handled it real well. Looks like Monday's safety meeting on high wall hazard recognition paid off. Before that meeting, these guys would have probably driven around that rock and just gone on down the road. Yeah, maybe. I'd like to think somebody listens. You know, I think last night's rain loosened a lot of those rocks. I've already ordered the trucks down to the south ramp and I've got the bucket truck coming over to scale this wall. Once that's cleaned up, we'll clean her up and get ready for tomorrow. Sounds like you've got all the bases covered. Boy, I hope so, but you know spring fall and rains really loosen these rocks. You know, I'd like to continue this theme at the next safety meeting. In fact, why don't you use today as an example and tell you what, let's give the guys some credit for what they did today. It's a good idea. For more information on high wall safety, visit our website at www.msha.gov.