METHANE DEVICE ALTERED FILTER WAS CHANGED BEFORE EXPLOSION

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

DATE: SUNDAY, February 14, 1993                   TAG: 9302140099
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CLINTWOOD                                LENGTH: Medium
METHANE DEVICE ALTERED FILTER WAS CHANGED BEFORE EXPLOSION
A mine worker says he replaced a worn-out filter in a methane monitor with a piece of cloth before a mine explosion that killed eight miners last year, a newspaper reported Saturday.
But Donnie A. Mullins, a mechanic at Southmountain Mine No. 3 near Norton, told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that the device was working. Two weeks after the Dec. 7 explosion, federal authorities issued a statement saying someone had shut off the monitor.
The monitor measures levels of explosive methane gas, which occurs naturally in coal seams, and shuts off a mining machine if the levels are dangerously high.
"I accept that I tampered with it, but it was not disabled," Mullins said from his Dickenson County home in a telephone interview with the newspaper. He said he volunteered information about his actions immediately after federal authorities made the statement.
Mullins, 42, said he needed to replace the filter in the monitor that keeps water out of the device, but no filter was available. "I just tore off a piece of a grease rag and used that," he said.
"In no way was I trying to" disable the monitor, he said.
After he replaced the part, he said he checked at least two times that the mining machine shut down when he exposed the monitor to test bottles of methane gas mixtures.
"The law says you have to test the machine each month, but we did it each week," he said.
The monitors are attached to machines that cut away coal by using a spiked, revolving drumhead. Jets of water hold down dust levels, and the monitor is designed to shut off the machine if heavy pockets of gas are encountered.
Family members of two victims in the explosion said Harry A. Childress, the state's chief mine inspector, has told them that the monitor worked the same with the makeshift cloth filter as it did without it, the newspaper reported.
But tests of the device to see how it was operating at the time of the explosion have not been made public. "There's no telling what effect the explosion had on it," Mullins said.
Both Childress and the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration refused to comment on Mullins' statement or to confirm what has been told to the families.
Family members of the eight miners killed in the explosion have criticized the federal investigation, which they said has unfairly singled out miners for blame in the accident. Authorities also said smoking materials were found in the mine.
Mullins, who has been a miner for 25 years, said Southmountain workers were very cautious.
"The big question for all of us is where did so much methane come from so suddenly," he said.
The highest methane reading turned up by federal and state inspectors in the months before the explosion in ventilated sections of the mine was 0.3 percent.
During rescue efforts, however, readings as high as 40 percent were discovered in abandoned mine areas.
Keywords:
FATALITY

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB