Questions Linger About Mine Safety

Two sections of the Utah mine which caved in March should have been a signal that something was wrong.Questions Linger About Mine SafetyBy Cliff Montgomery – Aug. 24th, 2007Relatives on Tuesday buried one of the three men killed while trying to free six trapped coal miners in Huntington, Utah.Murray Energy Corporation President Robert Murray, operator and co-owner of the Crandall Canyon mine, has apparently claimed that other segments of the mine provide safe working conditions, and that mining in those areas should resume. But questions are beginning to swirl about whether Murray’s dangerous mining methods in fact may be the cause of so much tragedy.Some mining companies believe the “retreat mining” methods employed at Crandall Canyon are so risky, they refuse to risk their workers’ safety with the procedure.Retreat mining is a rather common though clearly dangerous technique, in which a company’s miners are ordered to rip out a mine’s pillars to collect the last strands of coal.Murray recently admitted that retreat mining had gone on at the collapsed Utah mine for decades, though he’s been quick to claim that the questionable procedure hasn’t been performed there since he took over the mine last year.”There’s no connection between retreat mining and the natural disaster that occurred here,” Murray told reporters on Aug. 14th.”I’ve said that from the beginning, and that’s the way it will eventually come out,” he added.But officials at the Bush Administration’s Mine Safety and Health Administration have admitted that on June 15th they approved retreat mining at Crandall Canyon–in the very area that collapsed.“We have to stand up and speak for our brothers trapped underground. [Robert] Murray is more interested in the coal industry and his costs than the lives of the people and their families,” Tyler Firm, a miner who worked at the Crandall Canyon (then Genwal) mine until August 2006, told reporters.“I worked with those miners…When I worked at Genwal, we were pulling pillars,” Firm added.And he wasn’t the only miner beginning to speak up.“Sheriff’s deputies are present outside the mine and they keep a close eye on the miners who park their cars near the main road. Miners have been told not to speak to the press,” one worker who wished to remain anonymous for perhaps obvious reasons, told reporters.   Mine-safety experts state that two sections of the Utah mine which caved in March should have been a signal that something was wrong.They also say that Murray Energy–as well as the Mine Safety and Health Administration, which is supposed to oversee such matters–should have shut down the mine on the spot.Workers instead were sent to another section of the mine, and ordered to continue their work.”Knowing all the issues, [Murray Energy officials] made a conscious decision” to continue mining under such potentially dangerous conditions simply “because they wanted to recover that coal,”  Tony Oppegard, a private attorney who represents miners in Lexington, KY, told Associated Press (AP).Oppegard should know something about safety. Before setting up a private practice, he had served as a top mine safety official for both the feds and for the state of Kentucky.Several mine safety officials and numerous miners state that the evidence shows the tragedy to be the result of undue pressure on a coal seam, which often causes violent outbursts of rock and coal, thus creating a massive explosion of flying debris. Miners call this phenomenon a bounce.Bounces can force mine walls to collapse and raise the mine floor over two feet.Experts add that the decision to allow retreat mining in the section of the Crandall Canyon mine which collapsed was a gross error all around. The recently-collapsed mine area borders two outer sections which already had been mined, employing a method that primarily leaves unstable rubble in its wake.So as the last pillars were being pulled down to employ the immensely dangerous mining method, there was practically nothing but rubble to bear the weight of approximately 2,000 feet of mountain above.According to Bush Administration seismologists, the massive collapse of the Crandall Canyon mine was strong enough to register as a 3.9 earthquake on the Richter scale.Shortly before the tragedy, some miners were beginning to speak out against what may be Murray Energy’s dangerous gambles with workers’ lives.“A member of Manuel Sánchez’s family told a Utah paper that he had expressed concern about safety in one part of the mine,” CNN recently reported.Manuel Sánchez is one of the six men now trapped and presumed dead in Crandall Canyon.Like what you’re reading so far? Then why not order a full year (52 issues) ofe-newsletter for only $15? A major article covering an story not being told in the Corporate Press will be delivered to your email every Monday morning for a full year, for less than 30 cents an issue. Order Now!