Published: December 31, 2006 01:03 am      

‘Time will be the teller of truth’

Officials want to check industry compliance with MINER act

FAIRMONT — With the anniversary of the Sago Mine disaster approaching on Tuesday, federal and state inspectors should check — “on a mine-by-mine basis” and across the nation — to see how underground coal companies are complying with new federal and state emergency safety rules, says the mine-safety expert advising Gov. Joe Manchin III.

“Certainly, that would be worthwhile,” said Fairmont native J. Davitt McAteer.

He led the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) from 1994-2000.

His comments echo similar prodding’s by U.S. Sens. Robert C. Byrd and Jay Rockefeller. The two urged MSHA officials earlier this month to ensure that the industry is complying with the federal MINER act, legislation which was signed by President Bush in June.

The act requires:

• Continuously updated written emergency response plans at every mine.

• A one-hour response time of two experienced mine rescue teams.

• Wireless two-way communications and electronic tracking systems within three years.

• Grants for training to better identify, avoid and prevent unsafe working conditions; scholarships to help fill the ranks of miners and MSHA inspectors; and higher fines, plus injunctive relief for MSHA, to assure that operators pay civil violations

Federal and state regulators — led by Manchin and the state Legislature — also have adopted rules requiring a 15-minute reporting time for accidents and increases in underground portable air supplies. The state also eventually wants electronic tracking systems and the use of rescue chambers.

Meanwhile, Dennis O’Dell, a top safety official for the United Mine Workers of America, said the union will issue its own report on the disaster in several weeks.

“Time will be the teller of truth as to whether our miners are safer or not,” said O’Dell, also a Fairmont native.

“But mine operators cannot be trusted to police themselves without an enforcement agency to make them abide by the law,” he said.

There are reputable coal producers and “some of the larger operators are doing a lot” to improve safety, he said.

But the majority simply is focused on “production, production and production.”

Unfortunately, O’Dell said, the recommendations the union and other safety experts are making today are very similar to those they made in the fall of 2001, following what was then the worse mining disaster in 17 years: The Sept. 23 explosions at the Jim Walter Resources Blue Creek No. 5 mine in Alabama.

A total of 13 miners were killed in those blasts.

Coal mine safety was pushed off the national agenda then by the 9/11 disaster, he said.

The union is determined to find out what happened at Sago and to keep mine safety in the public consciousness, he said.

The theory that lightning sparked the methane explosion in a sealed-off section of the mine remains unproven, particularly the thesis that it can travel through the ground without a conductor, such as a metallic one, O’Dell said.

“I’m just not convinced that can happen,” he said.

He questions a report earlier this month that tests done at Sago in early November showed lightning could travel through the earth.

The tests involve the theory that the current from a lightning strike can generate electromagnetic fields deep in the earth.

While the Nov. 1-10 tests were described in newspaper accounts as testing whether lightning itself can travel through the earth absent any conductors, that’s not what the Sandia National Laboratories officials themselves said.

“We never expected to discover a smoking gun, nor did we,” said Larry Schneider in comments published earlier this month.

He is the senior manager of Sandia’s electromagnetic, stockpile support and work for others department.

Sandia is a National Nuclear Security Administration lab. It is known for its work on how lightning might affect surface and underground weapons facilities in western states. MSHA asked for Sandia’s help.

Schneider said in a Sandia press release that:

“We did characterize a coupling mechanism that the team of accident investigators hadn’t pursued — that current from a surface lightning strike can generate electromagnetic fields that can readily propagate through the earth, as opposed to current being driven into conductors entering the mine such as metal rails or power lines,” he said.

The release was published by Safety Online, an Internet newsletter available at www.safetyonline.com.

It’s still undetermined whether the voltage from such an electromagnetic field could get high enough to ignite a methane blast, the release states.

O’Dell said if the Sandia report proves correct, then the industry must offer miners the same protection given construction workers and football players when an electrical storm approaches: They should be evacuated until the storm passes.

The mining industry in Australia and a number of other countries takes precautions that U.S. companies don’t, he said, including the use of refuge or safety chambers.

The 12 initial survivors of the Sago blast were turned back after trying to make their way out of the mine by smoke, debris and concerns about other explosions and fires, as well as their own air supplies.

“In my heart, I know they did everything they felt they could to get out.” O’Dell said.

“We’re still pushing for safety chambers because they would be a miner’s last resort,” he said. Sturdily built underground bunkers can be stocked with extra air, food and water. If trapped miners can’t escape to the surface, they still might be able to reach such an underground chamber, he said.

In addition, use of a safety chamber would allow rescuers, who also face problems of secondary explosions, fire, smoke and debris, of swiftly determining whether any miners might have survived an explosion or fire.

“A safety chamber provides an exact location” for rescuers to go to, he said.

The industry is still using the same design of Self-Contained Self-Rescuers, mask-like devices that filter out carbon monoxide and other gases, which he used as a “red hat” or new miner in 1977, O’Dell said.

“We need to push to make them better,” he said.

McAteer gives a mixed grade to the industry when asked about the implementation of new federal and state emergency rules.

Citing points he made last summer in a report on the Sago explosion, McAteer said a shift in the culture of the nation’s coal industry is needed to make safety for miners a priority.

Steps that he and others urged should be done, like banning the use of the Omega Block in seals, have been accomplished, he said. The fiber-reinforced blocks, made of a mixture of cement, foam and fly ash, were banned by MSHA this summer. All 10 seals at Sago were blown away by the explosion, and the federal agency later raised the blast-protection standard of seals from 20 pounds per square inch (psi) to 50 psi.

But “default steps,” or common-sense steps while the industry waits for technology to be improved, have not been taken, McAteer said.

One default step would be to bury the telephone lines in mines. That would help protect them in explosions or fires. Adopting existing electronic tracking systems, while not perfect, would be another step, he said.

The key issue to elevating safety is the industry’s culture, McAteer said.

If U.S. coal companies followed the “best practices” philosophy of engineering and safety, he said, including doing a risk analysis before and during the sealing of worked-out mine sections, they could predict when naturally occurring methane gas reaches an explosive stage (5 to 15 percent of the available air) and take steps to protect miners.

“In the U.S., we take the position that if we seal an area, we do so and largely forget about it” in terms of remotely monitoring the gas buildup in the sealed area, McAteer said.

“In other countries, like South Africa and Canada, we’ll seal an area, but we will monitor the methane from inside and outside the seal.”

U.S. coal companies should monitor methane gas with the same high-tech approach they use for carbon monoxide, he said. Federal regulations call for methane readings by fire bosses before and during working shifts.

“We know seals breathe,” he said of leaks of methane gas in sealed-off areas.

At the Sago Mine and many others, however, a dispatcher at a mine portal uses a computerized carbon monoxide detection system. It uses remote sensors located at critical points in the mine.

“Other countries use risk analysis (in safety procedures and mining engineering). It wouldn’t be that expensive if it were used in the U.S.,” McAteer said.

Losing the 12 miners at Sago “simply should not be the case in terms of workplace safety in the 21st century.”

E-mail Bill Byrd at bbyrd@timeswv.com.