About 50 crew members have gone underground in staged deployments at the Grosvenor mine near Moranbah as Anglo American works to bring the site back online.

Grosvenor mine general manager Shane McDowall said that site’s team worked collaboratively with the Queensland Mines Rescue Service to undertake reconnaissance inspections and damage assessment underground.

The Grosvenor operation has been out of action since the workforce was evacuated on June 29 last year when a fire broke out underground.

Anglo has also been working to prepare the longwall at its Moranbah North for restart after an underground gas ignition there on March 31.

Mr McDowall said that following yesterday’s inspections at Grosvenor, Anglo would rectify any areas of concern and ensure the area was safe. This would allow it to progress to future stages of re-entry later this year.

He described the damage underground as quite minimal.

Related: QMRS inspections pave way for Grosvenor return

Crew members went underground in eight staged deployments reaching about 1500m from the surface.

“We thank Cook Colliery, Kestrel, Broadmeadow, Ironbark, Crinum, Aquila and Moranbah North mines for releasing their mines rescue crews to assist in this operation,” Mr McDowall said.

“We will continue to work in collaboration with Queensland Mines Rescue Service, Resources Safety and Health Queensland, and industry safety and health representatives, to ensure safety remains our highest priority at every stage of recovery.”

Grosvenor mine operations manager Scott Dobbie (pictured right) said many former team members were keen to return to the operation.

“I live in Moranbah and I’ve worked at Moranbah North, Grosvenor and Aquila. So I do see a lot of the ex-Grosvenor people that have been redeployed across to Aquila and Moranbah North in the community and they’re super keen,” he said.

“I haven’t had one person come up to me and not want to come back to Grosvenor, which is a great positive sign for us.”

Mr McDowall said months of work had led up to the approval of the Section 330 to allow crews to go underground at Grosvenor.

“The priority of that work was to ensure that the damage assessment footage that we’ve got from our LiDARs, from our cameras that we’ve lowered into the mine workings is cross-checked against our gas monitoring data as well so that we can ensure that the underground environment is ventilated, the area is safe for people to then re-enter,” he said.

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