seconds from disaster, page-11

If you really dig deep and use pure logic on the RED issues IMO there is only one conclusion that is valid. The decision to build a new tailings dam was paramount in the early days the new MD came to the company and lack of capacity in the now failed dam was of no consequence. It is probable that incident of the dam wall subsidence only reaffirmed the MD’s decision to build a much larger facility. The problem was, without an understanding of the time it would take to get a new dam operational as now admitted in the last RED announcement, it was like losing your Queen in the first three moves in a game of chess.

Perhaps a stoppage of the operation was always part of the revised plan since the timing to complete a new dam and the residual capacity of the old one don’t match. In the early days after the subsidence, and after the ‘secondary’ dam was decommissioned, the MD may have thought the new dam could be completed quickly and perhaps the failure of the dam played into this strategy. This conclusion makes more sense, since it gave the MD time to take a holiday while the rest of the RED management scurried around trying to initiate the new plan. It was only later that reality set-in.