FATAL WISE MINE MAY BE REOPENED

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 6, 1993                   TAG: 9301060146
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DOUGLAS PARDUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
FATAL WISE MINE MAY BE REOPENED
Less than a month after a methane explosion ripped through the Southmountain Coal Co.'s No. 3 mine, killing eight miners, work is under way to see if the mine can be reopened.
Robert Kyle, vice president of Southmountain Coal, said the company plans to assess damage after completing preliminary safety measures in the more-than-mile-deep Wise County mine.
Mike Abbott, a spokesman for the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy, said the rehabilitation work at Southmountain is closely monitored by state and federal inspectors. He said the mine cannot be reopened unless it passes a thorough federal and state inspection.
Kyle said his company still has no comment on a preliminary federal report last month revealing that someone tampered with a methane monitor in the mine. Federal authorities also confirmed a Roanoke Times & World-News report that some of the miners who died had smoked in the mine or carried cigarettes and lighters with them.
The tampering, reportedly a rag wrapped over the methane detector, was fairly obvious, a state mine official said. The monitor, attached to a continuous-mining machine, is designed to detect methane and cut off the machine before the level gets explosive.
It is illegal to smoke or even to carry smoking materials in a mine.
Federal and state inspectors completed their investigation inside the mine last month and are scheduled to begin interviews with mine employees Jan. 12. Among the employees will be Robert Kevin Fleming, the lone survivor of the blast. He survived because he was only a few hundred feet from the mine entrance and managed to crawl out, despite burns to his face and hands. The other miners were more than a mile inside, authorities said.
After the explosion, several funds were set up to help families of the dead miners. One fund, set up by Southmountain Coal at Miners Exchange Bank of Coeburn, has collected more than $12,000. Another fund, set up by Boddie-Noell Enterprises, owners of several Hardee's restaurants in the coalfields, collected nearly $30,000.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB