Published: April 22, 2007 01:32 am      

McAteer: Safety, rescue systems failed

Former MSHA head believes that overshadows whether lightning caused deadly Sago explosion

FAIRMONT — Investigators may never know whether lightning was the cause of a methane gas explosion at the Sago Mine last year that killed 12 coal miners, said J. Davitt McAteer, the former head of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration.

The investigation he did last year leans toward the theory that lightning “probably” caused the ignition in a sealed area of the mine.

Gov. Joe Manchin named McAteer his special adviser on mine safety and rescue after the Jan. 2, 2006, disaster. McAteer’s report was issued last July.

It notes that a conduit or pathway for the lightning to enter the mine and then enter the sealed area where the explosion happened had not been found at that point.

A traceable conduit, such as a cased borehole or one created for a natural gas or methane well, into the sealed area still hasn’t been found.

Methane gas is the principal component of natural gas, constituting more than 95 percent of it. In recent years, the industry has lessened the dangers of naturally accumulating methane gas in coal seams by drilling “degassing holes” before mining them.

Reports by International Coal Group, the owner of the mine, and an investigation by the state Office of Miners’ Health Safety & Training (MHST) also cite lightning as a probable cause of the explosion.

Earlier this year, the United Mine Workers of America sharply disputed the lightning theory in its investigation.

The union’s report cites the lack of a conduit for a lightning strike.

It also challenges findings in McAteer’s report that lightning strikes without a conduit caused eight prior underground explosions in sealed areas of other mines. Those explosions occurred in separate incidents from 1993 to 2001.

McAteer’s latest comments on the lightning theory — he was asked about it last week as he was busy preparing for a second annual international symposium on mine safety and rescue on Thursday and Friday at Wheeling Jesuit University — come as the industry waits for MSHA’s report.

An MSHA spokesman said Friday the agency “anticipates” completing its Sago report by the middle of May.

McAteer said Friday that whether lightning set off the gas in a mined-out area, which had been sealed only about a month before the blast, is not as important as the knowledge that safety and rescue systems — across the board — failed.

“I think that in 15 percent to 20 percent of mine disasters that it’s difficult to determine with finality the cause of the ignition source of a methane explosion,” he said.

“That reflects the facts that these explosions occur underground and that the explosion destroys the evidence,” said McAteer.

The union’s report which was issued March 15 states that it did not find “any plausible means for lightning to have entered” the Sago Mine.

Neither the company or the state MHST reports cite an example where lightning entered a sealed area of a mine without a direct conduit from the surface to the sealed area, the union’s report states.

“In addition, the union is unaware of any investigative report by MSHA that offers any such evidence,” it states.

The union looked at data from MSHA, the state MHST, the U.S. Bureau of Mines and the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety “in an effort to determine the potential for a lightning strike that occurred over two miles away to cause the explosion” at Sago.

It also reviewed a 1998 compilation by MSHA’s National Mine Safety and Health Academy on coal mine ignitions and explosions from 1959 through 1998.

Investigators of the eight incidents in sealed areas cited in McAteer’s report found conduits that could have been electrified by a lightning strike, the union claims.

The other “likely” cause in those cases was a “frictional roof fall,” or collapse of a mine roof that sets off sparks.

“It becomes apparent based on our findings that there is no conclusive evidence the lightning caused the (Sago) explosion,” the union report states.

The “most likely” cause was “frictional activity from the roof, roof support or support material igniting the methane-air mixture,” it states.

McAteer said he, too, examined the original reports by investigators in the questioned explosions.

“I found a number of reports where the investigators (in those incidents) were unable to identify a conduit into the mine. There were also reports by some investigators that there were conduits,” he said.

“What has to be addressed is the problems in our mine-safety and rescue systems. They failed — and failed miserably,” McAteer said.

Experts at the symposium on Thursday and Friday will discuss the host of new federal and state regulations generated by the Jan. 2, 2006, disaster.

Underground communications and tracking technology, breathing devices, mine seals and refuge chambers, and rescue team procedures and training are also on the agenda.

Mine safety and rescue equipment manufacturers will display their products at the WesBanco Arena in downtown Wheeling.

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