By Bill Byrd
Times West Virginian
FAIRMONT
August 26, 2007 01:44 am
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The federal mine safety report on the Sago Mine Disaster found that vinyl-sheet barricades made by the dozen trapped miners were not as air-tight as possible, contrary to how miners are trained to shield themselves from poisonous gases after an explosion.
The Mine Safety and Health Administration report states foot-wide gaps were found in them by the first rescuers to reach the 12 miners.
Issued May 9, the report finds the miners chose an area to enclose themselves that gave them sufficient air for about 47 hours under two key conditions: if they stayed in a smaller area, one that was also enclosed behind another shield of brattice cloth they had hung, and if the enclosed air was “normal.”
The 47-hour estimate is six hours more than the 41 hours it took rescuers to reach Randal McCloy, the sole survivor of the trapped crew.
The report does not offer any comment on the quality or effectiveness of the hastily made shelter, perhaps because there are too many unknowns surrounding the barricade issue.
The miners were already in “bad air” before they barricaded, subject to the disorientation and sickness-causing effects of carbon monoxide poisoning.
When asked earlier this month in an exchange of e-mails what difference do the findings make and whether more miners would possibly have lived if the barricade had been “leak-proof,” an agency investigator simply repeated the findings about the 47-hour air potential due to the size of the enclosed area and that McCloy was found at the 41-hour mark.
The barricade findings do not rate a mention in the agency’s root-cause analysis of the disaster.
But in its seven-sentence conclusion, the report states: “Unfortunately, the barricade was not able to prevent high levels of carbon monoxide from reaching the miners before they could be rescued.”
The report’s barricade section has struck a raw nerve with mine safety experts outside MSHA, including a top state mine official who dismisses it.
Unlike the controversy over whether lightning set off the large methane explosion in a sealed area of the mine, however, the debate about the barricade has been muffled.
Several experts interviewed were reluctant to comment.
It’s hard for nonminers to grasp the life-or-death choices the miners had to make, they said.
The miners chose to fight for life as a group, they said.
They knew they were in an atmosphere filled with carbon monoxide. They knew their breathing devices had only one hour of oxygen. Four miners couldn’t get their “Self-Contained Self-Rescuers” or breathing devices to work, McCloy later told investigators.
Their leader, Martin Toler Jr., chose to use brattice cloth for a barrier because they needed to conserve oxygen, McCloy said. Too much energy would be involved in building a block wall.
“I mean, here we got people without (SCSRs) rescuers. Plus there would be work involved trying to put blocks up. It just wouldn’t work” with the need to stay quiet, he said in his interview (pg. 32, McCloy transcript).
The non-MSHA experts said the miners died because of the collapse of a mine rescue and safety system sorely in need of major reforms.
“They did the best they could with what they had,” said one, voicing the consensus view.
Speculation that more men may have survived if the barricade had been tighter is scapegoating the victims, said another.
Questions about the barricade may never be resolved, they said.
The MSHA report
The 190-page MSHA report is written in a “just-the-facts” style. The section on the barricade is eight pages long (pgs. 68-75) and includes studies of carbon monoxide effects. The report and 38 appendices are on-line at this address: www.msha.gov.
The investigators found:
• The miners hung brattice cloth as a barrier against carbon monoxide and smoke instead of trying to build a wall of blocks, which were in the area (pg. 69). Fire-resistant “brattice cloth” is typically used for ventilation. It is usually made of heavy vinyl.
• The first rescuers to reach the miners found openings of about a foot between the edges of two brattice cloth curtains hung by the men and the uneven sides of the mine.
“According to these witnesses, the curtain across the crosscut between the Nos. 3 and 4 entries was loosely hung and open about one foot at the inby side. The diagonal curtain was open about one foot at both ends when the barricade was entered.” (pg. 71)
• “They also said no coal or other sealing material was on the bottom of the curtain to weigh it down for a tight fit.” (pg. 71)
• The enclosed area had enough air to sustain them for at least 47 hours under the two conditions cited above: if they stayed in a smaller area, one that was also enclosed behind another shield of brattice cloth they had hung, and if the enclosed air was “normal” (pg. 70).
• The carbon monoxide levels in the area of the barricade were fluctuating over time. The rescuers were repairing blown-out stoppings or ventilation curtains as they advanced into the mine.
• Like McCloy, who was near death when he was found, the other 11 miners in the barricade suffered carbon monoxide poisoning.
• At a level of 100 ppm (parts per million) in the air, healthy adults can suffer light headaches, fatigue, shortness of breath and errors in judgment. At a level of 400 ppm, carbon monoxide can be “life-threatening after three hours of exposure.” At 800 ppm, healthy adults may experience, confusion, collapse and “death if exposure is prolonged.” At 1,500 ppm, death can occur within an hour (all from Table Six, pg. 74).
• At 5:35 a.m. Jan. 3, 2006, about 23 hours after the 6:26 a.m. explosion the day before, the first sample of air collected from a borehole in the general area of the barricade showed 1,052 ppm of carbon monoxide (pg. 70).
• At about 11:30 p.m. that day, the captain of the McElroy mine rescue team and a MSHA mine rescue team member entered the barricade. They “stated that the CO (carbon monoxide) level was 300-400 ppm around and in the barricade area” (pg. 71). About two hours earlier, another sample at the same borehole showed 205 ppm.
• Measurements of the percentage of carboxyhemoglobin in the dead miners’ blood — carboxyhemoglobin is the binding of CO to oxygen-carrying hemoglobin cells — show those closest to the barricade curtains had higher percentages of it (pg. 75).
• On the conclusion page of the report (pg. 188) the barricade issue is cited in the next-to-the-last sentence: “Unfortunately, the barricade was not able to prevent high levels of carbon monoxide from reaching the miners before they could be rescued.”
MSHA’s response
A member of the agency’s Sago investigation team answered questions that had been e-mailed to the agency earlier this month.
Asked about the 1-foot gap in the brattice curtains, Richard T. Stoltz said the distance between the floor and roof in the barricade was about 7 feet.
“The barricade opening of 1 foot would be an opening equivalent to 7 square feet,” he wrote.
Asked if there was enough brattice cloth found at the barricade to make it airtight, Stoltz replied there was enough.
“Stopping material was (also) located throughout the area. Six skids of block were located on the supply cars approximately 750 feet from the barricade and the debris from damaged stoppings were located less than 500 feet,” he said.
“Blocks used as a barricade require more installation time, but could provide a barricade wall which would have been more air tight,” he said.
Asked what difference the open barricade finding makes and whether more miners possibly could have lived if it was “leak proof,” Stoltz said only:
“As the report states, the largest barricade area provided a 47-hour refuge area and Mr. McCloy was found at the 41st hour mark.”
Other experts
Terry Farley, the administrator of the state Office of Miners’ Health Safety & Training, and Dennis O’Dell, administrator of the United Mine Workers occupational health and safety department, criticized the agency’s report.
Farley said he’s “inclined to give the miners the benefit of the doubt.”
The gap between the edge of the curtains and the uneven sides of the mine may well have been caused by the rescuers, he said.
“Did that gap start as the result of the construction by the miners or did it happen when the rescuers popped open the barricade?” he said.
A byproduct of the explosion, the colorless, odorless carbon monoxide gas spread quickly through most of the mine, including the section where the 2nd Left Parallel crew found themselves trapped, Farley said.
“The MSHA report notes that ‘normal’ air is required for any type of barricade to be effective,” he said.
“It is extremely likely that the air in that area was already contaminated by the time the barricade was erected,” he said.
“If the air (inside the barricade) is already contaminated, the effectiveness of the barricade is a moot point,” the state mine safety administrator said. The state mine safety report on the disaster is on-line at this address: www.wvminesafety.org.
O’Dell said the miners did the best they could under the conditions they faced.
“All indications are they did everything they thought possible in terms of escape before they decided to retreat and barricade,” he said.
O’Dell cited the union’s report on the disaster. The report is available on-line at this address: www.umwa.org.
The mine’s ventilation plan pushed fresh air past the sealed-off area. When the explosion occurred in the sealed area, ventilation controls, including a key section of brattice wall, were also destroyed.
As a result, the union report states the miners were “doomed to a continuous flow of carbon monoxide.”
And if MSHA had followed up on a congressional mandate in the 1969 coal mine safety law — following the Farmington mine disaster in 1968 — to require safety chambers in mines, the miners would have been saved, O’Dell said.
In his preliminary report on the disaster last summer, J. Davitt McAteer, the former MSHA head during the Clinton presidency and a special advisor to Gov. Joe Manchin on the disaster, said, “Barricading means entering a race against time, against bad odds.”
“After an explosion or inby a fire, carbon monoxide is almost always present in life-threatening concentrations. Only a completely impregnable barricade will suffice,” his report states.
“Even if building one is feasible, the supply of respirable air behind it will be finite and will be drawn down and contaminated as it is breathed and rebreathed by the miners relying on it,” the report states. The report is available on-line at this address: www.wju.edu.
Emergency underground chambers are one option, he said.
Asked for this story if the Sago Miners would have survived if there had been a chamber where they built their barricade, McAteer said, “Absolutely.”
“They would have had time to reach it” and to be safe until rescuers reached them, he said.
E-mail Bill Byrd at bbyrd@timeswv.com.
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