Aftermath photos can be found here: http://goo.gl/SrEc2

Video of an accident that happened in Australia in 2008 at the Wesfarmers Curragh coal mine in central Queensland.

The official report cited operator error, and rumor has it the operator was inexperienced and pulled the wrong lever and allowed the winch to go into free-fall. He tried to catch it on the drum brake but that overheated, exploded and caught fire as you can see.

The dragline boom was being lowered for maintenance, and as you can see the correct radius hadn’t been chosen to let the drag line boom clear the M4600-based Transilift boom. The operator suffered minor injuries.