Yellowknife, N.W.T. - A potentially dangerous situation at Diavik Diamond Mine was averted earlier this month.

According to the company, some rocks came down from the side of the open pit in the early morning hours on August 5 and the company is crediting its safety system for preventing things from becoming a tragedy.

Diavik's acting manager of community and external relations, Corey McLachlan, said the early warning systems which monitor rock movements rang as soon as the rocks were detected.

"They went off about 10 hours earlier, so we were able to have all of our employees that were working in that area removed, and we monitored that area and 10 hours later some rocks did come down in our open pit."

It could have been an extremely dangerous situation; McLachlan explained just how big the rock pile was.

"We had approximately 5000 tons of rock come down, so again it was a fair sized rock slide."

He added work resumed about a week later and daylight work has resumed at the mine site, but it's a wait-and-see approach for evening work right now.

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