Miners working at Savage River in Tasmania's north west have a had a close call after a massive rock slide.

An estimated 140,000 cubic metres of rock collapsed into a mine pit yesterday shutting down some operations. Nobody was hurt but some mining equipment was damaged.

Mr Roy Ormerod from Tasmania's Workplace Standards has praised workers for spotting the danger before it was too late. He said that "They were in the mine, the open area and a few rocks dislodged from the top of the face and they looked up and realized there was an impending problem.”

He added that "Everyone was able to be quickly removed from site before the main rockfall occurred."

The company said that heavy rain over the past few days may have been a factor.

Grange's Wayne Bould said that the northern pit wall that fell was due to be mined over the next 12 months so the company has been forced to change its production schedule.

He said that "We have other areas available to work from on the short term and we've redirected our production efforts to there at the moment, but I'm not too sure on how we'll recut the plan over the next year.”

(Sourced from au.biz.yahoo.com)