Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, August 1, 1994 TAG: 9408010082
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID REED ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: KIMBALLTON LENGTH: Long
Snider hasn't worked in the mines for years, but he vividly recalls the scene 25 years ago when he found a co-worker after a rock fall. ``All you could see were his toes sticking out.''
Snider, a burly, soft-spoken man, turned his head, spat tobacco juice and stared at the grass of his front lawn for a while. A few hours before, search dogs had found his boy, and a rescue crew brought the body out.
``I tried to tell him it was dangerous work, but he wouldn't listen,'' Snider said at dusk Friday, sheltered from a drizzle by a blue nylon tent provided by the funeral home. ``He loved it down there.''
For half a century, two underground mines a mile apart in Giles County tunneled into the same seam of limestone, and only one person was killed, the man Snider saw in 1969.
Then, 10 months ago, a sheet of rock as big as a bus crushed two workers at APG Lime Corp. while they were drilling holes for explosives. Federal inspectors ordered APG to revise its mining plan to prevent similar accidents.
Last Monday, Barry Snider, 37, and Jeffery Morgan, 32, were doing the same job down the road at Eastern Ridge Lime Co. when a slab of rock fell. It crushed the cab of the jumbo drill machine where Morgan was sitting and broke his pelvis. Snider, a foreman who had worked for 10 years in the two mines, was presumed dead, but his body wasn't recovered until Friday because unstable roof and wall conditions made searching too dangerous.
``There was nothing to indicate it was going to fall,'' Morgan said from his hospital bed the day of the accident.
Since 1990, an average of three miners a year have died in rock falls at all of the underground mineral mines in the United States. One or two more a year died in other accidents, usually involving machinery. Underground coal mine deaths have averaged about 20 a year since 1990.
There have been major disasters in underground mineral mines, although they occur less frequently than in coal mines. A gas explosion killed 18 miners at a Utah sulfur mine in 1968. Fires killed 21 miners in a Louisiana salt mine in 1968 and 91 miners in an Idaho silver mine in 1972.
In Virginia, seven people have died in accidents at surface and underground mineral mines since 1989. Thirty-eight have died in coal mines, including eight men caught in an explosion 11/2 years ago in Wise County.
``You come to expect it in coal mining,'' said Terry Horton, who owns a general store between the APG and Eastern Ridge mines. ``This first one was a fluke. You look at the statistics and say it will probably be another 50 years before we get another one. Then this happens. Some [miners] who come down here are pretty traumatized by it.''
Morgan said Saturday he'll likely go back to his job underground, but he's unsure. ``I might get ready to go in and might be terrified, I don't know.''
Tom Creedle, a vice president at Eastern Ridge, said psychological counseling will be provided to employees if they want it or if company officials think they need it.
``There may be some who say, `I'm never going underground again in my life,' and others who will shake it off,'' Creedle said. ``We've got people who just do this for a paycheck and others who would live underground if they could.''
Barry Snider, who started working at APG 10 years ago and later moved to Eastern Ridge, was the latter type, Creedle said. He became a foreman after learning every job, including the one his father did before injuring his back. Emory Snider operated a front-end loader. The machine is used to pick up boulders in the mines and put them in big pickup trucks, which are driven inside the tunnels.
Horton recalled the day Barry Snider came into his store and got to talking about his work.
``He said it was just like walking into a factory, all lit up and roomy,'' Horton said.
Mark Haynie, a vice president at Eastern Ridge, said limestone miners ``don't have the same expectations of danger'' as coal miners because they don't encounter flammable gas.
Steve Parcell, president of the United Mine Workers union local in Giles County and an employee of APG, said there's more than a difference in attitude.
``The limestone mine laws are more lax,'' Parcell said. ``I don't think the inspections are as rigorous.''
Creedle and Conrad Spangler, director of the state Division of Mineral Mines, said mineral and coal mines are treated the same.
``We have the same regulations, inspections and training requirements,'' Creedle said.
There are more dangers in coal mines, where flammable gas seeps into the tunnels, some of which are only 2 feet high. There are advantages and disadvantages in working in room-size limestone tunnels, Parcell said. It's harder to get trapped inside, and gas explosions and fires are almost nonexistent. But rock falls are more dangerous because the rocks fall a greater distance and gain velocity, he said.
Parcell said he would like more surprise inspections of underground mineral mines and a resumption of state policy to inspect each mine four times a year. State mining officials said they recently decided to cut their regular inspections in half and concentrate more on training and spot inspections at mines with bad records. They point out that federal inspectors also check the mines periodically.
During a regular inspection at Eastern Ridge on June 17, state officials found five violations related to surface operations but none related to the underground mining.
Creedle said limestone mines are tricky to work in because the material is eroded by seeping ground water, which causes caves, sinkholes and, sometimes, rock falls.
The state and the federal Mine Health and Safety Administration concluded the accident at APG was caused by management's failure to correctly assess rock conditions and support the mine roof and walls when hand scraping of loose rock proved ineffective.
The agencies said a vein of calcite ``acted as a zone of weakness, causing the roof to shear from its natural bedding.'' The state recommended APG workers drill test holes to determine the makeup of the rock and have a geologist periodically inspect conditions and train workers.
APG bought a mechanical rock scraper and hired a consultant to improve safety.
Information from the investigation was provided to other limestone mines, Spangler said.
Creedle said he knew of no specific changes in their operation after the APG accident. ``The conditions involved, the character of the stone in our mine, are not the same as the character of the stone in the APG mine.''
Spangler said the preliminary indications in the Eastern Ridge accident are that water eroded a space in the rock above the limestone where Snider and Morgan were working and mud filled the void, just as calcite filled the void at the APG mine.
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB