by Mike Hall, Aug 17, 2007

The deaths last night of three rescue workers, including a federal mine safety inspector, at the Crandall Canyon coal mine near Huntington, Utah, “compounded what was already an immense tragedy,” says Mine Workers (UMWA) President Cecil Roberts.

The three dead, along with six injured workers, were part of a team of miners and Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) employees who were trying to clear a rubble-choked tunnel to reach six miners trapped 12 days ago by a collapse. This afternoon, MSHA suspended the underground search for the six because of safety concerns for the rescue workers. Officials did not say when rescue efforts would resume.

Evidence from three holes drilled into areas where the trapped miners were thought to be has given little hope they are still alive.

News reports say last night’s deaths and injuries followed a “seismic bump,” with enormous pressure inside the mine causing the walls to explode, shooting large chunks of rock and coal through the tunnel at tremendous speed.

Knowing the dangers in the Crandall Canyon mine, Roberts says the rescue workers:

put their own lives at risk in their determination to rescue their fellow miners. This is what they do, and this is what they are, and we are grateful for their valor, even as we mourn these losses.

Reports from the scene say the efforts have been slow because of the mine’s conditions. Rescue workers advanced a little more than 800 feet in nine days, with about 1,600 feet to go before reaching the area where operators believe the trapped miners had been working. The Salt Lake City Tribune reports that as many as a dozen miners asked to be moved to a different area of the rescue efforts because of fears for their safety.

Safety conditions have generated a continuing controversy at the nonunion Utah American mine owned by Murray Energy, especially over the mining plans and technique that received federal approval in the spring. Says Roberts:

Making the situation much worse is the fact that all of these deaths were needless and preventable. The original mining plan appears to have been flawed, to say the least. In our opinion, that plan should never have been approved.

Part of that plan involved what is known as retreat mining, which involves pulling roof-supporting pillars of coal from worked-out sections of a mine. Most mine safety experts say the technique, which MSHA had approved for Crandall Canyon, adds risks to mining.In March, a mine engineering company hired by Utah American warned of “poor roof conditions” in an area several hundred feet from where the six missing miners were working. Robert Murray, CEO of Murray Energy, has insisted that an earthquake caused the initial collapse, even though seismologists say the 3.9 magnitude reading recorded the night of the collapse was caused by the cave-in, not an earthquake.Roberts calls Murray’s claims “misleading and self-serving.”

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