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Vol. 71/No. 23      June 11, 2007

 
U.S. mine agency won’t cite bosses
for ‘root causes’ of Sago disaster
(front page)
 
BY TONY LANE  
PITTSBURGH, May 28—Stronger seals, proper methane monitoring, and the removal of a pump from a sealed area underground could have prevented the Sago Mine disaster in West Virginia, concluded a report issued by federal investigators May 9.

The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) report identified these as “root causes” that, if eliminated, “could have mitigated the severity of the accident or prevented the loss of life.”

MSHA officials, however, did not cite or fine the mine’s owner, International Coal Group (ICG), for these problems—or for any of the 149 safety violations the agency found in its Sago inquiry.

“I can’t tell where the coal company ends and MSHA begins,” Deborah Hamner, widow of Sago miner George Junior Hamner, told the Charleston Gazette, after a May 10 meeting where MSHA officials described their findings to the relatives of the workers who perished.

“They are so focused on the lightning issue that they have just pushed everything else aside,” Pam Campbell, the sister-in-law of Sago miner Marty Bennett, told the Gazette. She was referring to ICG and MSHA’s insistence that lightning ignited the blast.

Geraldine Bruso, brother of Sago miner Jerry Groves, told the Associated Press that “lightning didn’t kill our guys. It was the rescue, the equipment, the whole breakdown of the system.”

Twelve miners died at Sago, a nonunion mine, following a Jan. 2, 2006, methane explosion. Eleven of the miners who perished were trapped underground and slowly succumbed to carbon monoxide. A twelfth miner who was with them, Randal McCloy, survived.

United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) president Cecil Roberts said the MSHA report does not contradict the union’s contention that “it was the conditions inside the mine at the time of the ignition that caused the 12 men to die.”

An editorial published in the May 21 Charleston Gazette said MSHA’s failure to cite ICG “seems odd,” and quoted the agency’s director Richard Stickler as saying, “I would conclude that safety was not a top priority at this operation.”

Until that disaster, seals of the type used at Sago to block off unused sections of the mine, where methane gas builds up, were only required to withstand a blast of 20 pounds per square inch. On May 18, MSHA announced additional regulations, increasing the standards for the seals and calling for monitoring of gas levels. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) estimates that there are 14,000 substandard seals in U.S. mines today. These include 8,000-9,000 seals made of the light-weight Omega block used at Sago, and also at the Darby mine in Kentucky, where five miners were killed after an explosion in May 2006.

Meanwhile, the UMWA has been involved in two organizing efforts in southern West Virginia mines this spring. At the Progress Coal Company, a Massey Energy Company subsidiary in Boone County, a union representation vote was defeated 180-110 in mid-April. Another vote at the Brody Mine, also in Boone County, was frozen in early May by the National Labor Relations Board after UMWA complaints of unfair labor practices by the company.
 
 
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