Two deaths drive talks
Family tragedy spurs work safety message
Dallas Adams stands before rooms full of the kind of people he used to work with in 24 years of mining and underground construction and, always, the tears come.
It’s an industry that has given much to, and taken much from, the Brisbane-based Kiwi and his family.
In May last year his father, Jim Adams, died when he was hit by part of a pressurised pipe that detached during tunnel work on one of Sydney’s biggest motorway projects.
The 65-year-old grandfather grew up in the central North Island in a family of underground workers. He had worked as a tunneller and gold and coal miner on both sides of the Tasman — including in the Pike River Mine — since he was 18, and died days before the 13th anniversary of his eldest son’s mining death.
James Adams, 32, died in a rock fall as he worked with his father in a New South Wales coal mine in 2004.
For Dallas Adams, his grief at his only sibling’s death was something he “bottled up”. After his dad died, the father-of-three decided sharing his story with others in the high-risk industry would help him deal with his grief and potentially save others.
The 43-year-old “went back to school” to study health and safety and then, after starting his own company, developed a 45-minute presentation, Why Safety Matters, which he has presented to his dad’s former colleagues and City Rail Link workers in Auckland.
Adams will again speak to those working on New Zealand’s largest infrastructure project next month.
He wanted to remind those in the industry of the importance of safe work practices.
“I don’t hold back . . . I tell them I had two family members who went to work, and didn’t come home. It’s very raw — I’ve done over 200, 300 now and there’s not one that I wouldn’t shed a tear.”
Adams also speaks about growing up in a “tunnelling” family, “working in a tough industry of underground construction and mining with 12-hour shift work, mud, heat, dust and heavy machinery where it seems normal to get stuck in and get the job done”.
It helped that he knew the industry so well, Adams said.
“I use my experience to express how dangerous this work is and how important it is to make safe decisions . . . to not push or compromise safe work practices to get the job done.”
And although he didn’t consider himself a spiritual person, he felt his dad and brother supported what he was doing.
“I feel the strength I suppose of dad or my brother going, ‘Come on mate, get out there. Say what you have to say’.”