by Mike Hall, Mar 16, 2007

The family of Sago miner Jim Bennett, who was killed in the Sage explosion last year, joins UMWA President Cecil Roberts at a Capitol Hill press conference to discuss the union’s new report on management failures behind the conditions for the blast.

The 12 coal miners killed in the Jan. 2, 2006, methane explosion at the Sago Mine in Upshur County, W.Va., did not have to die, says a Mine Workers (UMWA) investigative report on the disaster. The deaths at the mine, operated by the International Coal Group Inc. (ICG), marked the beginning of the deadliest year in the nation’s coal mines in more than a decade.

Released yesterday at a Capitol Hill press conference, the report says the miners died:

as a result of a series of decisions that were made by the mine’s owner, and allowed by state and federal agencies that are charged with mine safety.

Some of these decisions were made in the weeks and months immediately prior to the explosion and in the hours immediately after it. Sadly, some of those decisions were made many years prior to the explosion.

UMWA President Cecil Robert says:

Whenever they were made, all of these misguided decisions contributed to this tragedy. And without immediate action by mine operators and regulatory agencies to reverse the effects of these decisions, more tragedies are inevitable.

According to the report, various decisions by the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) and mine management contributed to the disaster, including substandard mine seals, the mine’s ventilation plan, lack of adequate oxygen, no safety chambers, no two-way communication, no tracking devices and no onsite, experienced mine rescue teams.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says the many safety failures at Sago

were the result of decisions by [MSHA] to weaken legal requirements and by the Bush administration to stop new, stronger rules on mine rescue teams, oxygen supplies and escape ways and mine refuges….These deaths were not due to some “act of God.”

Last year, a report by ICG theorized that lightning was the cause of the underground methane explosion, even though the suspected lightning struck more than two miles away and there was no conduit for the electrical charge into the sealed-off area where the methane explosion occurred. According to the UMWA report:

There is absolutely no clear evidence to support the theory that lightning was the cause of the explosion. Further, there is no evidence that lightning striking the ground near a mining operation has ever traveled into the underground area of a mine without the presence of a conduit from the surface into the mine and then caused an ignition or explosion of gas or dust.

The UMWA report says the most likely cause of the blast was some sort of “frictional activity” from the mine roof, roof support or support material in the sealed area that created an electrical arc that sparked the methane explosion. But as Roberts points out:

Knowing how the methane ignited is important. But it is not really material to the subsequent deaths of the miners. The fact is the conditions at the mine at the time of ignition caused these 12 tragic deaths. This tragedy was preventable and should never have occurred.

Along with the 12 killed at Sago, 35 other coal miners were killed on the job in 2006 and their deaths spurred Congress to enact the first major improvements in mine safety law in 30 years. The next steps, Sweeney says, are to

ensure that these changes in law translate quickly into improvements in safety in the nation’ mines.

The report also makes dozens of recommendations that go beyond last year’s federal safety legislation. They include tougher standards for seal material and construction of seals of mined-out areas and improvements in monitoring and controlling methane accumulation. UMWA Secretary-Treasurer Daniel J. Kane says:

We cannot afford to wait. The sooner we implement these recommendations, either as law or regulations, the more secure miners will be in the knowledge that their jobs are as safe as possible. As this report demonstrates, we’ve got a long way to go before we reach that point.

Click here to download a copy of the full report.

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