2 rescue workers killed at Utah mine
Aug 17 2007 06:58
2 rescue workers killed at Utah mine
by PAUL FOY, Associated Press Writer
HUNTINGTON, Utah - A disastrous cave-in Thursday night killed two rescue workers and injured at least seven others who were trying to tunnel through rubble to reach six trapped miners, authorities said. Mining officials were considering whether to suspend the rescue effort.
It was a shocking setback on the 11th day of the effort to find miners who have been confined at least 1,500 feet below ground at the Crandall Canyon mine. It's unknown if the six are alive or dead.
Six of the injured rescuers were taken to Castleview Hospital in Price. One died there, one was airlifted to a Salt Lake City hospital, one was released and three were being treated, said Jeff Manley, the hospital's chief executive.
The workers suffered injuries to the head and chest as well as cuts and scrapes, said Rich Kulczewski, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Labor. Two of the injured were federal mine safety workers, he said.
No official cause of death has been released for either fatality.
The second rescuer death occurred at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center in Provo. Another worker at the hospital was in critical condition with head trauma but was alert, said Janet Frank, hospital spokeswoman. Another worker was expected to arrive at the University of Utah hospital in Salt Lake City.
Officials said the cave-in was caused by a mountain bump, which commonly refers to pressure inside the mine that shoots coal from the walls with great force. Seismologists say such an event caused the Aug. 6 cave-in that trapped six men inside the central Utah mine. Thursday's bump occurred about 6:30 p.m. EDT.
Family members of miners, many in tears, gathered at the mine's front entrance looking for news.
A mine employee, Donnie Leonard, said he was outside the mine when he heard a manager "yelling about a cave-in."
A woman who answered the phone at the mine said mine co-owner Bob Murray, chief of Murray Energy Corp., was not available for comment.
It was not immediately clear where the rescuers were working or what they were doing when they were hurt. Crews have been drilling holes from the top of the mountain to try to find the miners while others were tunneling through a debris-filled entry to the mine.
Underground, the miners had advanced to only 826 feet in nine days. Mining officials said conditions in the mine were treacherous, and they were frequently forced to halt digging because of seismic activity. A day after the initial collapse, the rescuers were pushed back 300 feet when a bump shook the mountain and filled the tunnel with rubble.
Before Thursday's incident, workers still had about 1,200 feet to go to reach the area where they believe the trapped men had been working.
The digging had been set back Wednesday night, when a coal excavating machine was half buried by rubble by seismic shaking. Another mountain bump interrupted work briefly Thursday morning.
"The seismic activity underground has just been relentless. The mountain is still alive, the mountain is still moving and we cannot endanger the rescue workers as we drive toward these trapped miners," Murray said earlier Thursday.
Murray had become more reticent to predict when the excavation would be complete. At the current rate, it was expected to take several more days.
On top the mountain, rescuers were drilling a fourth hole, aiming for a spot where they had detected mysterious vibrations in the mountain. That drilling was believed to be continuing after the latest accident, but the mine was evacuated and officials haven't decided whether to suspend the rescue effort, Kulczewski said.
Officials said Thursday that the latest of three holes previously drilled reached an intact chamber with potentially breathable air.
Video images were obscured by water running down that bore hole, but officials said they could see beyond it to an undamaged chamber in the rear of the mine. It yielded no sign the miners had been there.
Murray said it would take at least two days for the latest drilling to reach its target, in an area where a seismic listening device detected a "noise" or vibration in 1.5-second increments and lasting for five minutes.
Officials say it's impossible to know what caused the vibrations and on Thursday clarified the limits of the technology.
The device, called a geophone, can pinpoint the direction of the source of the disturbance, but it can't tell whether it came from within the mine, the layers of rock above the mine or from the mountain's surface, said Richard Stickler, chief of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration.
The "noise," a term he used a day before, wasn't anything officials could hear, Stickler said. "Really, it's not sounds but vibrations."
Officials stressed that the motion picked up by the geophones could be unrelated to the mine, even as they drilled the new hole in an effort to uncover the source of it.
Together with the discovery of an intact chamber and breathable oxygen levels, the baffling vibrations offered only a glimmer of hope for rescuing the miners, but Murray had seized on the developments Thursday.
"The air is there, the water is there — everything is there to sustain them indefinitely until we get to them," he said.
Officials said results of air quality samples taken from the intact chamber, accessed by the third deep borehole, showed oxygen levels of roughly 15 to 16 percent.
Normal oxygen levels are 21 percent, and readings in other parts of the mine taken since the Aug. 6 collapse have registered levels as low as 7 percent.
At 15 percent oxygen, a person would experience effects such as elevated heart and breathing rates, Stickler said.
Video images from the same shaft showed an undamaged section complete with a ventilation curtain that divides intake air from exhaust air. Behind the curtain, in theory, the men might have found refuge and breathable air when the mine collapsed 10 days ago.
Also Thursday, Murray corrected comments he made late Wednesday that a camera that detected the curtain had been lowered through the third borehole, made at the rear of the mine. The curtain was actually observed by a camera sent down a borehole drilled earlier into an area where the trapped men had been working, he said.
Nothing had been detected or heard since the five-minute period Wednesday, Stickler said Thursday.
___
Associated Press writers Chris Kahn and Alicia A. Caldwell in Huntington, Ed White in Salt Lake City, and Jennifer Talhelm in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.
Aug 18 2007 02:40
#2
This is devastating.
The workers are so brave.
Mine owners .. 
Aug 18 2007 03:40
#3
Quote:
Mine owners ..
Aug 18 2007 04:10
#4
Good link yeah ..
These mine owners and their supporters are surely some of the most evil peeps in the world - i cried when i read the quote from the nonunion worker Donna Green.
Yelling at the circling copters?? 
at least the guy was stressed and under siege.. and let his stupidity and incomptence be clearly seen.. small comfort i know -these guys are murderers plain and simple..
Aug 18 2007 06:32
#5
Wait I thought there was no difference between union and nonunion besides the difference between having two bosses and one?
Aug 20 2007 20:26
#6
See any ICC or AF members in the thread MJ?
A warning?
Memo shows mine already had roof problems in March
By Robert Gehrke
The Salt Lake Tribune
Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated:08/12/2007 01:07:15 PM MDT
Operators at the Crandall Canyon mine experienced serious structural problems in the mine in March and entirely abandoned work in an area about 900 feet from where six miners remained trapped Saturday.
A memo obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune shows that mine owners were trying to work around "poor roof conditions" before halting mining of the northern tunnels in early March after a "large bump occurred . . . resulting in heavy damage" in those tunnels.
A bump or bounce occurs when the intense pressure on the coal pillars supporting the mine causes the pillars to burst, "sending coal and rock flying with explosive force," according to that National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
The memo indicates that mine operators knew the tremendous pressures of a mountain bearing down on the mine were creating problems with the roof, and they were searching for a way to safely keep the mine from falling in as they cut away the coal pillars supporting the structure.
"It's dangerous. Damn dangerous I would say," Robert Ferriter, now director of the mine safety program at the Colorado School of Mines and a 27-year veteran of the Mine Safety and Health Administration. "What is MSHA doing in all this? They're the ones who are supposed to catch this sort of thing."
The problems between the 133rd and 139th crosscuts, numbers given to passages cut across the entry tunnels, prompted operators to quit mining the northern tunnels of the Main West corridor. The operators also hired Agapito Associates Inc., a Colorado mining engineering firm, which wrote a memo for the company explaining steps that could be taken to allow the south tunnels to be retreat mined safely.
It is near crosscut 138 on the south side of the main corridor, where rescue workers believe the six miners were trapped, that the enormous pressures on the roof of the mine created a "bump" early Monday morning and caused a catastrophic cave-in.
The miners were working in a spot about 900 feet from where the dangerous roof conditions were noted in March, according to a detailed map of the mine. The damage from Monday's cave-in stretched hundreds of yards, with rubble blocking entries more than half a mile away and numerous additional bumps making rescue work unsafe.
Repeated calls to UtahAmerican Energy Inc., the mine operators, seeking information on the roof issues were not returned. Robert Murray, part owner of the mine, said he was not aware of any prior roof concerns. "It's the first time I've heard of this," Murray said of the March incident.
A message left at Agapito Associates last week was not returned.
Richard Stickler, assistant secretary of the U.S. Labor Department and head of MSHA, acknowledged the March incident, but said it occurred in an area hundreds of feet away.
But in a mine that stretches for miles, conditions in both areas would be "nearly identical," Ferriter said. "If you had problems up there on the north side, I would expect you would have the same problem on the south side."
The memo and mine map both indicate that, along the northern tunnels, there undoubtedly was retreat mining - a process in which support pillars are carved away by a mining machine, recovering the last remnants of the coal seam and causing the roof to collapse.
Murray had initially denied there had been retreat mining done, but MSHA officials said that technique was used in the mine.
On June 15, MSHA district manager Allyn Davis accepted a "roof control amendment," permitting retreat mining along the southern tunnel as well, documents show.
The retreat mining along the northern tunnels through the spring had progressed to crosscut 138 when unstable roof conditions prompted a decision not to cut down the next several supports.
When the pillars at the next two crosscuts were pulled in early March, "A large bump occurred at this point resulting in heavy damage to the entries located between (crosscuts) 133 and 139," the Agapito memo says.
To do damage to entries across six crosscuts, nearly 800 feet in the Crandall mine, the March bump would have to have been huge. It is unclear if it caused the roof to fall or the floors to buckle or heave. Such events are supposed to be reported to the MSHA, but MSHA's public data shows the last reported roof fall was in 1998.
An MSHA official began an inspection of the roof in the Crandall Canyon mine in late May, which was still under way, according to MSHA records. No violations had been reported. Stickler would not discuss the inspection.
But roof conditions prompted operators of Crandall Canyon to abandon the retreat mining on the north barrier.
"What that would tell me right up front is that's a bad section of the mine, and it's so bad they decided to not even try to mine it," said Bruce Dial, a former federal mine safety official.
To safely mine the south barrier, the Agapito consultants wrote, the width of the support pillars should be increased by more than a third, from 92 feet to 129 feet. Such an increase "helps to isolate bumps to the face and reduce the risk of larger bumps overrunning crews in outby locations," the memo says.
It is not clear from the mine map if the wider pillars were being used.
Mining was progressing along the south end of the main tunnel last week when it is believed a major bump caused the cave-in, trapping the miners working about 900 feet from where the March problems occurred.
"It was a bounce," Jameson Ward, one of four miners who escaped the mine, told The Tribune. "Bad things happen. Nothing can be done about it."
Ferriter isn't so sure. He said the retreat mining practice UtahAmerican was using in the mine is suspect in light of the amount of pressure created by 2,100 feet of mountain above the mine.
"The whole thing, to me, looks like you're taking a real risk because you have all this high stress there," said Ferriter.
Both areas to the north and south of the main tunnel had been "longwalled," meaning the coal had been extracted and the areas had caved in, leaving no support on either side of the main tunnel. Digging out the last supports for the main tunnels is extremely dangerous.
"I'm surprised that they would try to take that last section," Ferriter said. "I would've thought that would have triggered someone from MSHA to say, 'Wait a minute, let's take a look at this.' . . . I think this needs to be looked at in a lot more detail."
rgehrke@sltrib.com
---
* KRISTEN MOULTON and GLEN WARCHOL contributed to this report.
Aug 20 2007 21:09
#7
Mine Safety Czar Richard Stickler: Another Bush Fox Guarding the Henhouse
http://www.alternet.org/wire/59856/
The man who will oversee the federal government's investigation into the disaster that has trapped six workers in a Utah coal mine for over a week was twice rejected for his current job by senators concerned about his own safety record when he managed mines in the private sector.
President George W. Bush resorted to a recess appointment in October 2006 to anoint Richard Stickler as the nation's mine safety czar after it became clear he could not receive enough support even in a GOP-controlled Senate.
In the wake of the January 2006 Sago mine disaster in West Virginia, senators from both sides of the aisle expressed concern that Stickler was not the right person to combat climbing death rates in the nation's mines.
Democrats, led by West Virginia Sens. Robert Byrd and Jay Rockefeller, and Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, questioned the safety record of the mines Stickler ran when he was a coal company executive.
Over the course of his career in the private sector, Stickler managed various mining operations for Bethlehem Steel subsidiary BethEnergy Mines, Inc.
The Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette reported in January 2006 that three workers died at BethEnergy mines managed by Stickler during the 1980s and 1990s.
Gazette reporter Ken Ward, Jr. wrote that in the worst of the incidents, one mechanic was killed, and eight other workers were injured when the portal bus that was carrying them to the mine-shaft bottom derailed. A report later said the portal bus had not been properly maintained.
Stickler began his career as a general laborer at BethEnergy, eventually rising to manage the company's operations in Pennsylvania and Boone County, West Virginia.
He worked briefly for Massey Energy subsidiary Performance Coal in 1996 and 1997 before becoming head of the Pennsylvania mine safety office. Stickler retired from the post in 2003.
In addition to concerns about the safety record at his mines, Stickler also faced opposition from senators, union leaders and relatives of those killed in mine accidents who felt an industry insider should not oversee safety inspectors.
United Mine Workers of America President Cecil Roberts said that miners "could not tolerate" another industry executive overseeing their health and safety.
"Too often these mining executives place priority on productivity, but fail to focus on miners' health and safety," Roberts told Mike Hall at the AFL-CIO's blog in June 2006.
The wife and daughter of a miner killed at Sago wrote a letter to lawmakers that same month urging them to reject Stickler's nomination.
"Mr. Stickler is a longtime coal executive and because of his connections with the coal industry, we are concerned that his primary objectives may be solely on compliance and production, not on miners' health and safety,'' Debbie Hamner and Sara Bailey wrote in a letter quoted by the Gazette.
Bush first nominated Stickler to head the Mine Safety and Health Administration in September 2005. He received renewed attention from lawmakers following the Sago disaster. By May 2006 it was clear that Byrd and other Senate opponents would not allow Stickler's nomination to pass, and Republicans withdrew a scheduled vote on his job.
In July 2006, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao hired Stickler as a consultant and adviser, but insisted through a spokeswoman that she was not attempting to circumvent the nomination process.
In August and September of the same year, the Senate twice voted to send the Stickler nomination back to the White House.
In October 2006, Bush used a recess appointment to install Stickler -- a decision that was quickly denounced by senators from both sides of the aisle.
Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Spector, a Republican, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that he "didn't think Mr. Stickler was the right man for the job." Another Pennsylvania Republican, Rick Santorum, also told the paper he was "disappointed" the White House had not let senators debate and vote on the nomination.
Senator Byrd told the Huffington Post that "Until I see better progress from MSHA, I will retain my hold on Mr. Stickler's nomination. The quality of MSHA's investigations and resulting actions in the aftermath of the Indiana and Utah incidents will undoubtedly be a test of Richard Stickler's leadership and worthiness to be properly confirmed by the United States Senate. I continue to be very concerned about the slow implementation of the MINER Act and other mine safety improvements. I told Mr. Stickler about my concerns earlier this summer."
Aug 24 2007 16:09
#8
more on murray's history:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/24/us/24murray.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Rescuers suspend effort at Utah mine
By MICHAEL RUBINKAM, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 2 minutes ago
After 10 days of setbacks, nerve-jangling "bumps" and a second mine collapse that killed three workers trying to rescue their comrades, authorities Friday conceded defeat to a mountain that appeared to be slowly crumbling.
"Is there any possible way we can continue this underground operation and provide safety for the rescue workers? At this point we don't have an answer," federal Mine Safety and Health Administration chief Richard Stickler said as he announced that officials had suspended the rescue operation indefinitely.
The collapse Thursday night killed three rescue workers and injured six others who were trying to tunnel through rubble to reach six men trapped since Aug. 6 after a massive cave-in. Crews on Friday were still drilling a fourth hole into the mountain to look for any sign of the missing men.
"Without question, we have suffered a setback, and we have incurred an incredible loss. But this team remains focused on the task at hand" — the rescue of the miners, said Rob Moore, vice president of Murray Energy Corp., co-owner of the Crandall Canyon Mine.
Said Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who ordered flags lowered to half staff: "We went from a tragedy to a catastrophe."
Huntsman continued to call the effort a "rescue operation," but he said the digging would not resume until workers' safety could be guaranteed.
"Let us ensure that we have no more injuries. We have suffered enough as a state," he said.
President Bush called Huntsman Friday afternoon to express his condolences for those who died or were injured in the mine rescue. "He wanted the governor and the people of Utah to know that they are in his thoughts and prayers," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.
Mexico's consul in Salt Lake City, Salvador Jimenez, said he spoke with Huntsman and urged him to continue the rescue effort. While experts need to study the best way to do it safely, "this effort should not be interrupted," Jimenez said. Three of the six men still trapped are Mexican nationals.
The cave-in at 6:39 p.m. was believed to be caused by a "mountain bump," in which shifting layers of earth forced chunks of rock from the walls. The force from the bump registered a magnitude 1.6 at the University of Utah seismograph stations in Salt Lake City.
"These events seem to be related to ongoing settling of the rock mass following the main event," university spokesman Lee Siegel said. "I don't think I'm going too far to say that this mountain is collapsing in slow motion."
Stickler said the bump unleashed a massive blast of coal and support material that buried the miners working to clear rubble from the underground tunnel. The blast created a destruction zone about 30 feet long along a wall of the chamber and knocked out steel posts, chain link fencing and the cables that tied everything together.
The rescuers had been working beneath 2,000 feet of sandstone. Stickler said the weight of the mountain created tremendous pressure on the cavern, blowing out reinforced walls with a force that could break a 40-ton mining machine in half.
"When that energy gets released, it's like an explosion," he said.
Rescuers frantically dug out the injured men, buried under 5 feet of coal, by hand and rushed them from the mine on the beds of pickup trucks. One died at the scene, said Kevin Stricklin, MSHA's administrator for coal mine safety.
Two of the dead were identified as MSHA inspector Gary Jensen, 53, of Redmond, and miner Dale Black, 48, of Huntington.
Jensen had worked at MSHA since 2001 and was recently assigned to special investigations, agency spokeswoman Amy Louviere said.
Black grew up two doors from Huntington Mayor Hilary Gordon, who visited his mother Friday and recalled that he was "just full of life."
The president of the United Mine Workers of America, Cecil E. Roberts, blamed the mine's owners and federal officials for the latest tragedy. Owners of the nonunion mine had rejected UMW offers to help in the rescue effort, saying they had all the help they needed.
"This disaster has only compounded what was already an immense tragedy. Making the situation much worse is the fact that all of these deaths were needless and preventable," Roberts said in a statement from union headquarters in Fairfax, Va.
But Stickler said outside experts had signed off on MSHA's plan to ensure the rescuers' safety underground.
"There was consensus that the plan that we had developed and implemented provided the maximum safety of workers that we knew to be available," he said. "Obviously, it was not adequate."
Noticeably absent Friday from the news conference announcing the suspended rescue effort was Bob Murray, co-owner of the mine, who had been a dominant presence at previous briefings.
"He wanted to be here. I'm certain you understand the reasons he could not be here this morning," Moore said. He provided no details on where Murray was.
MSHA is summoning the experts to the mine to see if they can develop a safer way of tunneling toward the trapped miners, Stickler said. But he said any further rescue efforts would have to involve drilling a bore hole large enough to fit a rescue capsule — a task that would take more than two weeks, according to Stricklin.
Sue Ann Martell, director of the mining history museum in nearby Helper, Utah, said the rescue workers won't give up easily.
"Because if they were in there and they were the original six, they'd want to know somebody was coming after them, and they wouldn't want them to give up," Martell said. "Yeah, three more have died, you've got six more injured. OK fine, let's stabilize the mine, but we're going back. They won't give up."
"Think about the code that's among firemen — you don't leave a man behind," she said.
Martell, who is a neighbor to one of the trapped miners, said she cried for the first time Friday.
"It's just mounting up and mounting up," she said. "It's horrible."
In Mexico, Susana Salcido sobbed when told that the search for her cousin Manuel Sanchez and the other miners had been suspended.
"Yesterday we were hopeful after learning that they had heard noises (inside the rubble)," said Salcido, who lives in Sanchez's home town of Nuevo Casas Grande.
"We never imagined that instead of good news we would hear about another tragedy," she added, referring to the killed rescuers.
Even so, she said she is not ready to lose hope. "All we can do now is pray for a miracle," Salcido said.
Bob Ferriter, a former MSHA engineer who teaches safety at the Colorado School of Mines, said it could take weeks before conditions are safe enough to attempt another underground rescue. But he predicted the mine would have no trouble getting workers to go back underground.
"It's a brotherhood. If they were in there, they would want somebody to come back and recover them," Ferriter said. Leaving the six men in the mine, he said, "would be the last option."
Yet miners have been left underground before. In 1968, a mine explosion in Farmington, W.Va., killed 78 miners. Nineteen remain entombed.
The Scotia Mine in Kentucky was sealed after a March 1976 accident that killed 26. Rescuers concluded the risk of additional explosions was too high. And 12 men killed in the 1959 Knox Mine disaster in Pennsylvania were never recovered.