Two More Coal Miners Die; New Report Shows Conditions in Mines Are Deadly

by Mike Hall, Nov 7, 2006

The death toll in the nation’s coal mines stands at 44 so far this year. The latest two fatalities were those of a Kentucky miner killed Nov. 4 and a West Virginia miner who died on the job Oct. 30.

Forty-four. That’s twice as many miners killed on the job as all of last year. With nearly two months to go in 2006, that’s already more coal miners killed than in any year since 1995.

What has been the Bush administration’s response to the deadliest year in the mines in more than a decade? The brazen, backdoor recess appointment of  former Massey Energy Corp. executive Richard Stickler to head the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA). This after the Senate twice rejected his nomination and after coal mining families urged Bush not to tap the industry insider with a questionable safety record to lead MSHA.

Perhaps more frightening than Stickler’s appointment is the report by the West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training on the January fire that killed two coal miners at the Aracoma Coal Co.’s Alma No. 1 Mine, operated by Massey in Logan County, W.Va. If the conditions described in the report are any indication of safety conditions at other coal mines, the possibility that more coal miners will die this year is high.

Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts says the report shows the mine was:

Set up to be a death trap in the event of an accident, and that’s what it became. Everywhere you turn in this report, there is another safety procedure that was supposed to be followed that wasn’t or safety equipment that was supposed to be in place that either wasn’t there or didn’t work. There was no water available to fight the fire because it was shut off. The hose couplings didn’t fit. Carbon monoxide monitors were not installed. Ventilation plans were not being followed, and ventilation controls were not being maintained.

Jordan Barab at Confined Space notes that after the report was issued, Massey tried to duck responsibility for the deadly fire ands foist blame onto workers and state and federal inspectors. But as Roberts says:

These are Massey management’s responsibilities. These are things they’re supposed to be staying on top of. The report clearly shows that this is a tragedy that didn’t have to happen, shouldn’t have happened, and only happened because proper and required safety and maintenance procedures were not followed at that mine.

Orders from the top of Massey’s corporate food chain to place production—to “run coal”—above all else likely played a role in the disaster, Roberts says.
 
Last year, before the Aracoma deaths, Jordan reported that Massey CEO Don Blankenship sent a memo to Massey mines that read in part:

If any of you have been asked by your group presidents, your supervisors, engineers or anyone else to do anything other than run coal (i.e., build overcasts, do construction jobs, or whatever), you need to ignore them and run coal. This memo is necessary only because we seem not to understand that the coal pays the bills.

Says Roberts:

This is yet another example of what happens when upper management puts pressure on a mine to “run coal” before doing anything else. Proper maintenance isn’t done, needed and required safety equipment is not put in place, and effective safety procedures in the event of an emergency are not followed. When you put production ahead of safety, tragedies like this are all too often the result.

With the coal industry running more coal—and thus earning more money—than in recent years and with the Bush administration’s let-the-industry-police-itself attitude toward job safety, the next nearly two months of 2006 may see the possibility of more coal mine accidents.

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