Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 27, 1993 TAG: 9305270234
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS and DOUGLAS PARDUE STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
In a hearing Wednesday before a House Education and Labor subcommittee, Edward C. Hugler, acting assistant secretary of labor for mine safety, said investigators are trying to determine whether operators of Southmountain Coal Mine No. 3 purposefully ignored safety procedures designed to prevent an explosion.
"In this instance . . . the mine operator violated basic safety standards, based on decades of experience, and, as a result, eight miners lost their lives," Hugler told the subcommittee. "The Southmountain mine explosion was preventable and serves as a tragic reminder of the consequences of circumventing basic safety standards."
While there is no doubt that numerous safety regulations were violated, it could take a few months for investigators with the Mine Safety and Health Administration to determine if the mine operators willfully violated safety laws. If violations appear to be willful, the case will be turned over to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution, Hugler said.
The Virginia Division of Mines, which also investigated the explosion, has referred its findings to the Wise County commonwealth's attorney for possible criminal prosecution.
Hugler made his comments in releasing MSHA's report on the Dec. 7 mine disaster. As a result of the investigation, Hugler said, Southmountain Coal Co. and one of its operators, William Ridley Elkins, were cited Wednesday with 33 violations of safety regulations, eight of which contributed directly to the explosion. If given the maximum $50,000 fine for each of the civil violations, Elkins and Southmountain could be fined $1.65 million.
Southmountain executives were unavailble for comment.
Hugler said one of the troubling aspects of the investigation was trying to untangle a web of business arrangements that concealed the actual mine operator. He said Elkins repeatedly refused to be called anything other than a consultant, but investigators are certain he was one of the actual operators because he hired, fired and signed pay checks.
Elkins' name had been listed initially on the mine documents. But his name was removed last year after the state regulators threatened to take away a mining permit because of Elkins' connection to other mines that had violated environmental laws.
Elkins, contacted during the course of the investigation, has refused comment.
Hugler said mine investigators will untangle the "complex business arrangements" to find out who's responsible.
Hugler said investigators singled out Elkins in the report because he had actively tried to conceal his involvement. "He's going to be on the line to pay those fines, unless he can show us otherwise," Hugler said.
Subcommittee Chairman Austin Murphy, D-Pa., expressed outrage at what he called an apparent effort by big businesses to conceal ownership. He said it appears that the businesses behind Southmountain wanted the mine to seem a "mom and pop" operation so that they could cut expenses and go in with "a rag-tag operation."
Small coal mines have a much greater rate of deaths and injuries, Hugler said.
Wednesday's hearing was the first time that a coal mining disaster investigation has been released at a congressional oversight committee hearing. Murphy, who comes from a coal mining district, said he asked for it because one of the best ways to put pressure on sloppy coal operators is "to put the spotlight on them."
The federal report produced no surprises. Its findings are virtually identical to a Virginia report reased earlier this month.
Both reports blame the explosion on a massive breakdown in safety compliance in the mine's fresh-air ventilation system and violation of the approved mining plan. As a result, methane seeping in from another coal seam above the mine built up to explosive levels.
Another "major" cause of the explosion, Hugler said, was that the build-up of methane went undetected. The mine operator failed to conduct required weekly and pre-shift examinations that would have revealed the methane.
The night before the explosion, foreman Kenneth Brooks conducted the pre-shift examination and later passed on what he had found to foreman Norman Vanover, who was killed the next morning. Brooks hadn't found any methane, but he didn't go into several areas of the mine, including the crucial left-side tunnel where the blast was ignited, the report said.
Federal investigators believe the methane already had built up at the time of Brooks' examination, but he failed to find it because he didn't go into the area, MSHA official Tim Thompson said.
The only significant difference in the reports' findings is that the federal report concludes flat out that James Mullins, one of the dead miners, set off the explosion by lighting a butane lighter, apparently for a cigarette. Smoking materials are forbidden in mines, but Mullins and two of the other dead miners had smoking material on their bodies.
One of the eight contributing violations charged against Southmountain is for not adequately policing the ban on smoking materials.
Rep. Harris Fawell of Illinois, the ranking Republican on the subcommittee, said he had reports that MSHA rarely fined miners for violating the smoking ban, and he said the amount of smoking going on atSouthmountain calls into question the adequacy of MSHA's safety education programs.
Hugler said that since MSHA revealed shortly after the explosion that some of the dead miners had smoking materials, MSHA's Norton office has received anonymous calls from miners reporting that their fellow miners were smoking underground. Those reports were investigated and resulted in MSHA "discouraging" the practice at those mines, Hugler said.
Fawell also asked Hugler why MSHA didn't conduct more spot-checks on Southmountain since it was a small operation that had a history of safety problems.
Only one spot investigation was done at Southmountain after the last regular quarterly inspection in October.
Hugler said MSHA has a program to target small mines for more inspections, but Southmountain was not on a list of 15 Virginia small mines identified for special attention.
Hugler said the Southmountain investigation will be used to reinforce MSHA's safety program. "The messages from this accident investigation need to be heard loud and clear throughout the mining community," he said.
The agency has printed 2,000 copies of the report to distribute to federal inspectors and mine companies and has prepared a videotape (which was shown Wednesday) to demonstrate what went wrong at the mine.
The agency also plans to crack down on violations of ventilation standards, workplace examinations and failure to search for smoking materials, by evaluating them for higher penalties.
Joe Main, safety director for the United Mine Workers, said after the hearing that he doesn't believe federal safety standards have been affectively applied in small mines. Main said future hearings of the subcommittee will take up broader issues, including MSHA's role in enforcing the law.
MSHA already has begun a review of its inspection procedures to see if they could be improved to prevent such disasters, Hugler said. But Hugler put the bulk of the blame on the mine operators and the miners.
"A relatively small number of mine operators still refuse to accept their safety responsibilities. Behavior such as that demonstrated in this accident is hardly typical of today's coal industry," he said.
Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon, in whose district the explosion occurred, did not attend the hearing. But he sent a statement explaining a bill he has introduced that would prohibit a mine operator or his representative from being present during the questioning of witnesses during a mine-disaster investigation, as was the case during the Southmountain investigation. Family members and others have been critical of that practice, saying it inhibited company employees from telling all they knew.
Murphy said that in the coming weeks he expects to hold at least one more hearing on the Southmountain disaster. The subcommittee will be able to hear from the UMW at that hearing and the relatives of the dead miners if they want to testify, he said.
"The explosion at Norton proves that America's miners, even with the protections afforded them under the law, still face death or disfigurement at any time on the job," Murphy said. "The Mine Safety and Health Administration must maintain a vigilant watch, because the potential for another Norton remains a prevalent concern for every miner."
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB