Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, January 12, 1993 TAG: 9301120257
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS and DOUGLAS PARDUE STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
FAMILIES, UMW CRITICIZE PROBE OF MINE EXPLOSION
Victims' families and the United Mine Workers union have strongly criticized the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration's investigation into a Wise County coal mine explosion.Eight miners were killed and a ninth injured in a Dec. 7 explosion at Southmountain Coal Co.'s No. 3 mine, six miles north of Norton. The mine is a non-union operation, owned by Jack Davis of Coeburn.
In separate letters dated Monday and Friday, a lawyer for the families and the UMW's safety chief called on MSHA director William Tattersall to reverse his decision not to hold public hearings into the cause of the accident.
Other points singled out for criticism included:
The agency's decision to allow company representatives sit in on interviews of mine employees, while at the same time keeping representatives of the families out.
The early release of information about smoking materials found on some miners that families and the union said draws attention from the real issue - how explosive levels of methane collected in the mine.
Tony Oppegard, a lawyer with the Mine Safety Project in Lexington, Ky., wrote Tattersall that his clients object to MSHA's decision to allow company representatives to sit in on interviews with employees.
The company will be "breathing down the necks" of employees who are interviewed, Oppegard said in a phone interview Monday. "Retaliation is very real in mining."
Miners could be "blackballed" as far as hiring is concerned, he said.
"It is inconceivable," Oppegard wrote Tattersall, "that you or any other MSHA official can actually believe that miners are going to freely tell you about unsafe mining practices in the presence of Southmountain officials who control their livelihood."
Interviews should be conducted so that the most truthful testimony possible can be obtained, Oppegard said, in order to prevent jeopardizing a later criminal investigation of the accident.
Oppegard represents the families of explosion victims Mike Mullins, James Mullins and Brian Owens.
Wayne Veneman, a spokesman for MSHA, said the agency was following normal procedures in the investigation, which include allowing company representatives to attend employee interviews.
"If a witness wants to be interviewed in private, we will do that," Veneman said.
Voluntary interviews with more than 20 company employees begin today at MSHA's Norton office.
Veneman added that transcripts of the testimony of witnesses will be made available to the public as soon as they are completed.
Oppegard said the benefit of public hearings, where witnesses could be subpoenaed and put under oath, would be to put "greater scrutiny" on MSHA's regulatory activities and hopefully lead to improvements in mine-safety law.
Federal mine-safety law was strengthened after public hearings into the 1976 Scotia mine disaster in Eastern Kentucky, Oppegard said.
MSHA's fatality investigations in the Appalachian region have been too narrow, Oppegard wrote Tattersall.
It's not enough, Oppegard said, to find out what happened in the mine but MSHA must find out why mining conditions, regulated by state and federal law, were allowed to deteriorate to the point there was an explosion.
Joe Main, the UMW's chief safety official, agreed with Oppegard. "The key to avoiding mine explosions, as most mine experts know, is to ventilate coal mines to dilute and carry away . . . methane so it cannot explode," Main wrote Tattersall on Friday.
Why did safeguards such as pre-shift and on-shift methane inspections and automated methane detection devices on mining equipment fail? Main wrote Tattersall. "Was coal dust ignited, increasing the force of the explosion because of a failure to adequately rock dust the mines as the law requires?"
Main also suggested state and federal agencies might be trying to hide their responsibility in the accident by releasing information about the discovery of smoking materials on some miners. The discovery was first reported by the Roanoke Times & World-News.
"The general public is being misled . . . leaving the impression that smoking is the cause of these miners' deaths," Main wrote.
"The fact is that coal mines are filled with all kinds of ignition sources that can ignite methane," Main said, citing many examples including welding machines, power cables, and electric pumps.
The release of the information was "insensitive and wrongheaded," Oppegard said in his letter to Tattersall.
Although Tattersall knew there were numerous possible sources of the spark that ignited the explosion, he "nonetheless chose to highlight the one fact that would clearly tarnish the miners' reputations in the public eye."
Veneman responded, saying he wanted to "set the record straight" that Tattersall had released the information about the smoking materials and an apparently intentionally disabled methane monitor on a piece of equipment because he thought it was something that other miners and mine operators needed to know for their own safety.
"He did not say they were the cause of the accident."
Besides the interviews with employees, MSHA has begun laboratory tests on some of the physical evidence gathered inside the mine. The explosion investigation is expected to take several weeks.
Meanwhile, Robert Kevin Fleming of Clintwood, the only survivor of the explosion, said he's recovering fairly well but that his hands are "pretty tender."
He said he still does not know if he'll try to go back to work in the mines.