Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 15, 1993 TAG: 9305170244
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Miners do bear personal responsibility for their own safety. It is a shared responsibility - with work supervisors, mine owners, federal and state mine-safety agencies. All of these parties must be held accountable after the December methane explosion at the Wise County mine.
No matter what penalties anyone else has to pay for lax safety enforcement, however, none will approach that exacted from the eight miners who paid with their lives. The fact that some of them had carried, and apparently used, smoking materials in the mine is appalling. Despite criticism from the miners' grief-stricken families, the Mine Safety and Health Administration was right to issue a warning against such a dangerous practice as soon as investigators found evidence of the violation.
Yet, while the flick of a butane lighter may have sparked the explosion, any interpretation of the state's findings that attempts to lay all blame on that fateful act would be wrong. Careless practices created the conditions for that risky spark to explode disastrously.
It occurred because methane, a volatile gas released from the ground during mining, had built to dangerous levels. Any number of other sources could have created a spark that ignited the blast.
While methane can build up rapidly, without warning, there are safety procedures for reducing the risk of buildups and alerting miners when one has occurred. The state investigation found that mine supervisors were lax in following these procedures. Among their errors were:
Failure to examine the mine for methane before the start of the work shift.
Failure to require the proper repair of the mine's methane monitor.
Violation of the mine's roof-control plan, designed to ensure proper air flow to prevent dangerous buildup of methane. Extra cuts were taken off coal pillars, which support a mine's roof, to boost production.
Failure to dust coal seams with powdered limestone, which reduces the volatility of coal dust. Ignited coal dust swept the initial methane explosion through Southmountain No. 3.
These failures along with the presence of smoking materials create a picture of a mine operating with a general complacency about safety that cannot be tolerated. The penalty is death, not just for those who choose to ignore the rules, but for miners who must go with them under ground.
The state cannot hope to eliminate the dangers associated with an inherently dangerous job. And it already has taken some measures in response to this latest disaster. Among them:
It has reclassified all mines as "gassy," in line with federal policy. Southmountain was regarded as "non-gassy" by the state, and that may have given miners and operators a false sense that a gas buildup wasn't a threat.
It has made it a felony to carry smoking materials in a mine or to tamper with instruments designed to detect methane.
It has given another $500,000 to the state's Division of Mines to hire more safety inspectors, mine-ventilation specialists and instructors for training and certification programs.
It needs to look now at how to blast the air of complacency that hangs so ominously over the Southmountain report.
For starters, better enforcement muscle is needed. The state had considered dropping its safety-inspection program in favor of more training programs, since MSHA also inspects mines for enforcement of federal regulations, but abandoned the idea when the United Mine Workers objected.
If it is to stay in the inspection business, it should be given the authority to impose stiff penalties for violations - and it should be hard-nosed in imposing them. Now, inspectors can issue violations, but the only penalty they can impose is to close the mine if there is imminent danger.
It can work more closely with MSHA. The agencies share some information, but not by established procedure. Federal inspectors had found high levels of methane at Southmountain during one visit before the explosion, but state inspectors were unaware of it.
Miners must remember, though, that no amount of oversight by either agency will catch every safety violation occurring in every mine in Virginia. Their lives are at stake. They must be safety inspectors, too.
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB