Gazette photo by Chris Dorst
Well, we’ve got a story online with the latest on the previous “methane outbursts” at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine — the bottom line being that teams exploring the mine have found a crack and other mine floor damage that could end up being an important clue in what caused the April 5 disaster.
I say could end up being important, because it will take more investigation to find out — the crack will have to be mapped and measured, and investigators will likely take samples from in and around it to see if they find ash or other material that indicates the explosion started there.
Coal Tattoo readers know that the Gazette initially reported last week on the previous methane outbursts — in 2003 and 2004 — at Upper Big Branch, and later on the fact that MSHA had kicked one staffer off its internal review team after it was made public that he was the agency’s acting district manager in Southern West Virginia when these incidents were investigated.
And now, Massey is making much of this whole situation, using it to try to further its public relations efforts to point fingers at MSHA for the explosion that killed 29 miners and injured two others.
But it’s important to remember that Massey has not been able to support some its previous allegations along these lines. For example, Massey CEO Don Blankenship warned Gov. Joe Manchin and the governors of other coal states that MSHA-mandated ventilation plans currently in use in their states could put miners at risk. But when asked to identify the mines in question, Massey officials could not do so.
So what about the latest allegations from Massey? Well, in a press release issued yesterday, the company argued that the solution to preventing further methane floor outbursts would have been to pump more fresh air to the longwall face — something Massey says MSHA-mandated ventilation changes prevented Upper Big Branch managers from doing. Massey noted the recommendation for more air to the longwall was part of a July 2004 MSHA report, and the company even posted the report on the Internet. The news release quoted Blankenship:
The July 15, 2004 report is very important. MSHA recognized in 2004 that more airflow was necessary to address methane outbursts, should they occur. However, in 2009 and 2010, MSHA required UBB to adopt a ventilation system that resulted in less air. It is too early to determine what role these changes played or to determine the importance of the crack in the mine floor. However, this will be a focal point of our investigation and, we hope, the state and federal investigations.
Most of the media coverage, like this piece from The Wall Street Journal and this one from The Associated Press, focused in on this complaint by Massey.
But wait a second … take a look at our initial story about the 2003 and 2004 methane outbursts at Upper Big Branch, at this paragraph in particular:
Federal regulators concluded at the time that a reservoir of natural gas below the Upper Big Branch Mine might easily be released into the active mining operation. They recommended a series of steps to try to prevent such incidents, or at least to control them, hopefully preventing an explosion or fire. One such recommendation — to drill “degasification” wells into the mine — was among the steps Massey Energy President Don Blankenship argued this week was the wrong approach for ventilating Upper Big Branch.
Now, the MSHA report that Massey posted online contains only a brief mention of degasification wells, and basically writes the whole idea off:
Experience suggests that locating and degassing floor methane zones through a drilling program was highly problematic.
But for some reason, Massey didn’t post online this earlier MSHA report, dated March 4, which outlined steps that company had said it planned to take to deal with the methane outburst problem:
Mine personnel reported that in the subsequent longwall panel, degasification wells will be developed into the Lower Eagle seam in an attempt to decrease the potential for future outbursts. This appears to be a reasonable plan.
So did Massey do that? That’s one thing investigators are looking into … but not something that you’d know about if you read Massey’s press releases or the media coverage generated by the company’s PR campaign.
MSHA doesn’t help itself in all of this. The agency has yet to explain how a former acting district manager who was involved in investigating the 2003 and 2004 incidents at Upper Big Branch could have ended up on the MSHA “internal review” team that is examining the agency’s performance at the mine prior to the disaster.
And MSHA chief Joe Main is apparently in a bunker somewhere, unable or unwilling to even confirm that teams exploring the mine had found a floor crack and some “heaving” of the mine floor … instead, Main issued a statement last evening that tried to just downplay the whole situation:
The investigation team is reviewing a large number of records including the 2004 memo Massey referenced, as well as inspection records and a significant number of more recent citations issued by MSHA for ventilation problems in Massey’s mine in the months leading up to the explosion. While the air quality in the sections of the mine being worked six years ago may provide some insight, the team’s primary focus is on the circumstances occurring in the minutes, hours and months leading up to the explosion. These records, the results of the physical examination, MSHA’s previous actions at the Upper Big Branch and other relevant facts will be fully explored in the public hearings to be held once the physical examination of the mine is complete.
Ah, yes … public hearings. Well, we know that the “public hearings” planned by MSHA aren’t really public hearings — they are staged events at which witnesses hand picked by MSHA will testify about issues only MSHA wants to ask about. Main has made no commitment to allow families of the miners to question witnesses at those hearings, as families from the Sago disaster did at the public hearing organized by special investigator Davitt McAteer four years ago.
When he answers questions from the media — and even from the Upper Big Branch families — Main most often prefaces whatever he says by explaining how long he’s been in the mining business. Everyone should indeed respect Joe Main’s long career, a lifetime dedicated to protecting the health and safety of coal miners in this country and across the world. But times change, and in the aftermath of the Upper Big Branch disaster, MSHA and Joe Main are taking quite a beating from Massey and its PR campaign.
McAteer made some comments about this PR campaign in my story in today’s Gazette:
McAteer criticized Massey for selectively releasing information, noting that the company didn’t issue a news release when MSHA made public information that showed three weeks before the disaster, Massey had not properly rock-dusted Upper Big Branch to control the buildup of explosive coal dust.
“Selective release of information doesn’t help,” McAteer said. “It has to be taken with a grain of salt until there is an independent review of it.”
Of course, one way to deal with this problem of “selective release of information” by Massey would be for MSHA to reverse itself and begin conducting the entire investigation out in the open. If this happened, any spurious allegations by Massey could be defused with truth from witness testimony, and MSHA officials could provide context that ensures the media coverage is accurate and balanced. Or, at the very least, MSHA could come out of hiding and conduct periodic public and media briefings to answer questions about these issues.
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I know Ken Ward doesn’t like the comments section of his blog to become just a cheering section, but I want to add an “Amen” to his suggestion that at least from the public perception point of view, MSHA is not handling this investigation very aggressively or effectively so far.
Can’t MSHA borrow some professional investigators from the Justice Department/FBI? And can’t they get some professional communicators, too, to help develop and implement a communications strategy that serves MSHA’s purposes?
Twenty-nine people died — just because they went to work. If twenty-nine children had died in a school explosions or twenty-nine seniors had died in a nursing home, we’d have people asking and aswering question in public – tough questions. And heads would be rolling.
Let’s get some sunshine going here!
Well Mr. Blankenship, It seems to me that as the CEO of Massey Energy who claims that safety is number you would have closed that mine down after the floor cracks in 2003, 2004. And for certain, if safety is number one and you were aware of the floor cracks and methane rush, you wouldn’t employee demolition crews to blast the mountain above with high explosives that risking cracking that strata where your real coal miners were working.
The more Blankenship talks the more he implicates himself. Amazing. Please keep talking Don.
Compuuters and the internet are amazing tools for improving public awareness, dialogue, and accountability.
So — why doesn’t MSHA use that tool by simply scanning and posting PDFs of the records and citations that they are reviewing? After all, they are public documents, and I can’t see any big legal/confidentiality issues.
I can think of two possible answers to this question. The first is laziness and lack of imagination. The second is to limit public scrutiny and discussion.
Ask them, Ken, and see what they tell you.
Ken, you might find this an interesting read if you haven’t already seen it.
http://www.usmra.com/repository/category/disasters/Massey_Letter_MSHA_Vent_plans_060710.pdf
It’s a letter penned by Don Blankenship on June 7, 2010 to four state Governors complaining about MSHA’s actions pertaining to ventilation plans.
Rob,
I appreciate it … if you read my post above, you’ll see this link:
http://wvgazette.com/News/montcoal/201006080873
Which is a story about the letter you’re talking about …. I would encourage reading this Coal Tattoo post for a little more context than Mr. Blankenship’s letter provides:
http://blogs.wvgazette.com/coaltattoo/2010/06/08/masseys-don-blankenship-steps-up-efforts-to-point-fingers-at-msha-in-upper-big-branch-mine-disaster/
Ken.
Coal Mine Bumps: Five Case Studies in the Eastern United States (1987)
http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/mining/pubs/pdfs/ic9149.pdf (39 pages)
Introduction
A review of literature and accident reports on violent failures in coal mines reveals confusion as to the definitionof the type of failure involved. Violent failures in coal mines may be classified as bounces, bursts, and outbursts. A bounce is the sudden forceful impact or vibration of a coal pillar, which may be accompanied by rib or face sloughage. A burst is the instantaneous explosive failure of coal or associated strata. An outburst is the spontaneous ejection of coal and gas from the solid face. The coal is pulverized in the process. The gas released is a mixture of predominantly methane and carbon dioxide. Outbursts result in acavity ahead of or to one side of the entry. During an outburst, large quantities of gas are emitted. Subsequently, there is a rapid reduction in the gas emission rate with time. This paper deals with bursts encountered during retreat coal mining. Because “bump” is the term applied to this type of failure in the Eastern United States, the term will be used throughout this paper.
Retreat coal mining concentrates stresses on the pillars directly outby gob areas. This stress situation is made worse when mining is conducted in areas encased in rigid associated strata. Overlying strata form cantilever beams over adjoining gob areas that transfer pressure onto adjacent outby pillars. Available datashow bumps have caused 49 accidents from 1978 to 1984 and resulted in 14 fatalities from 1959 to 1984 in the eastern States of Kentucky, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
Occurrence and Remediation of Coal Mine Bumps: A Historical Review
http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/mining/pubs/pdfs/oaroc.pdf (41 pages)
Tom, did you miss the all of those stories on NPR about how FBI is conducting a criminal investigation into the explosion?
I saw those stories, HK and I take your point. I guess that I am assuming that the issues in a MSHA investigation are significantly different than the issues in a criminal law investigation conducted by the FBI. I guess I am also assuming (based on what I have seen in other cases) that MSHA personnel are less experienced at conducting in-depth, difficult investigations, where people may be covering things up, than are FBI investigators.
Of course, maybe they are working together as a real team, but we certainly don’t know that. The bottom line for me is that past MSHA and indeed past criminal investigations, conducted mostly behind closed doors, have not led to safe mines.
Assigning some sharp cops and prosecutors to work on the MSHA team — and plenty of sunshine so the public can understand everything — might be a good idea. Maybe we owe it to those miners who died.
What interested me about those old Bereau of Mines reports is where are the newer investigations/studies of such methane encounters?
For sure, the lengthy longwalling mine faces must have increased such incidents/encounters.
Tom and “Hippie Killer”
Folks, the argument that we have to not have transparency because of a criminal investigation just can’t be sustained any longer … all one has to do is look at the fact that the BP civil investigation is being done in public hearings, while there is also a criminal investigation underway there …
I don’t think NPR has mentioned this contradiction … it has been covered in Coal Tattoo here:
http://blogs.wvgazette.com/coaltattoo/2010/05/27/gulf-oil-disaster-gets-public-hearing-but-upper-big-branch-explosion-stays-behind-closed-doors/
And UMWA President Cecil Roberts wrote a Gazette Op-ed about it here:
http://blogs.wvgazette.com/coaltattoo/2010/06/09/umwas-roberts-why-does-oil-disaster-get-a-public-hearing-while-mine-disaster-probe-goes-on-in-secret/
The question really now is why don’t 29 coal miners get the same treatment as 11 oil rig workers? The Obama administration and Joe Main haven’t answered that yet.
Ken.
“The question really now is why don’t 29 coal miners get the same treatment as 11 oil rig workers?”
Perhaps because West Virginia has been American’s National Energy Sacrifice Zone for so long that it’s easier to ignore us? Looking at it from a purely news point of view, when was the last time Upper Big Branch was on CNN, Fox, etc.? … while you can’t get away from the hourly images of oily pelicans and frustrated shrimpers and a flustered president.
We had our horrible tragedy and it played out over national TV/print/radio for a few days but now the national media has moved on to the next disaster. And without that attention from the national media, neither the Obama administration or MSHA are going to feel any particular reason to give our 29 dead miners the same attention as the 11 dead oil rig workers are getting. All 40 of them, in a sense, died on the altar of America’s addiction to fossil fuels, and we can only hope that more don’t die needlessly and that we learn something from these preventable tragedies. There’s always hope in West Virginia. Sometimes it’s about all we do have.
With both of these fatal disasters and many others — including those on 9/11/2001 — there is some degree of governmental incompetency involved.
That continuing incompetency is the root question that continues to go unaddressed: Why does our government keep failing us?
Personally, this forseeable but unstoppable disaster — no matter how much I tried — got me out of OSM.
http://groups.google.com/group/bob-mooney/web/i-70-collapse
Massey and BP may have caused the deaths, but the government could have and should have prevented those deaths from occurring.
Once again, outstanding reporting on revealing Blankenship’s PR operation, which is aiming to place the blame on MSHA.
Everyone should check out some of the info published on MSHA’s website. MSHA citations (on the MSHA home page) show again and again that the ventilation plan was not being followed, and the company was written up for not having the correct velocities of air on the longwall. From what I read on the MSHA web page, inspectors wrote several citations because of inadequate air flow to the face, floating dust, accumulations of dust. Blankenship’s arguments are not sound or logical.
I see what you did there Ken.
First, the investigation was supposed to be open because Massey lawyers were going to get into the interviews “one way or the other.” Now that it’s clear that Massey lawyers in fact didn’t get into the interviews, you have to come up with another reason.
HK, I gather your view is that the existence of the ongoing criminal investigation militates against greater openness in the MSHA inquiries. No one could dispute this, but there are also indisputably strong reasons for openness. Personally, if I had a vote (I don’t), I come down for openness because past closed-door efforts have not been effective in a number of ways.
By the way, here is a link to the original mine inspection reports at UBB: http://www.msha.gov/PerformanceCoal/PerformanceCoalRegularInspectionReports.asp. MSHA is definitely doing the right thing in posting these.
Tom,
MSHA has for years posted some information about all of its mine inspection reports on its Web site … there is a key difference to what they’ve done here that is worth noting.
Typically, MSHA’s inspection information includes very vague details about citations and enforcement orders — to the point of only stating which of the many CFR sections were violated. Normally, the online data does not explain exactly what condition at the mine prompted a violation of that CFR section — so it’s very hard to figure out exactly how serious a violation might have been.
In this instance, MSHA has taken the additional step of adding a piece of information that provides the text written by the inspector, describing the condition that led to the violation. It’s very helpful — and it would be nice if they would add that to all of their inspection data that is online.
Ken.
“Hippie Killer” —
Thanks for another comment … But you are describing the position I’ve taken far too narrowly.
My belief that Massey lawyers would eventually find a way into the “private” investigation interviews was really not the main reason that I have advocated a more public process. More on that in a moment.
On Coal Tattoo, I’ve addressed this issue of whether the company lawyers would get into the interviews in a couple of posts, primarily these two:
http://blogs.wvgazette.com/coaltattoo/2010/04/28/will-transparency-help-massey-energy-and-hinder-the-upper-big-branch-mine-disaster-investigation/
http://blogs.wvgazette.com/coaltattoo/2010/05/17/will-massey-lawyers-get-into-the-interviews/
And in fact, I have written, as you paraphrased:
“One way or another, Massey is going to get into these interviews. That’s the way mine death investigations have pretty much always worked.”
I’ve written that:
“The only good argument for secrecy in these interviews is that allowing openness tips off the company to the direction investigators are headed, allowing them to thwart things like potential criminal prosecution down the road. But if the company lawyers are in the room, well, what’s the point of the secrecy?”
Perhaps you have a list of who has been in the room for all of the interviews. I don’t. I have been told by investigators — none of whom would be named as sharing this information — that so far, Massey workers and former workers who have been identified have with a few exceptions not had any personal representatives (Massey lawyers or anybody else) attend interviews with them.
If that information is true, then indeed, so far the guidelines set up by Labor Secretary Hilda Solis appear to have worked. But it’s important to keep in mind that the interviews are far, far from over — and so far, according to what I’ve been told by investigators — foremen and other supervisory officials have not been interviewed. We’ll have to see if the no-Massey lawyers situation holds true through the rest of the investigation.
In any event, those posts mentioned above were written mostly in response to arguments made by you and others that the MSHA investigation should not be conducted in public, so as to avoid tipping off Massey about the direction any criminal investigation might be headed.
However, the PUBLIC HEARINGS into the BP Disaster are even stronger proof that that a public hearing into the Massey Mine Disaster is warranted. There’s a criminal investigation of BP actions at Deepwater Horizon, too — but yet other agencies of the Obama administration continue a public hearing of the civil investigation is fine, and haven’t called off the public hearing to avoid interfering with a criminal probe. I’ve asked MSHA for a response to this point, and they haven’t come forth with one.
But all of that aside, there are other more basic, compelling reasons for a public hearing — and it’s frankly surprising to me that anyone would think that journalism organizations would take any position other than that this should be done in public. Journalists and journalism organizations are not prosecutors — we’re not arms of the police or of MSHA, the FBI or the Justice Department. Our job is to provide the public with information, so that our readers, listeners and viewers have the best and most complete information we can provide. I’m immediately disappointed and suspicious of anyone who says they’re a journalist, but easily accepts government secrecy.
I was hardly the only journalist to advocate for public hearings here … Read the letter sent to MSHA by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, http://www.rcfp.org/newsitems/index.php?i=11398 … among those who advocated a public hearing were The Associated Press, the American Society of News Editors, the Radio Television Digital News Association, the Society of Environmental Journalists, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Association of Capitol Reporters and Editors, and the National Newspaper Association.
Among other things, the Reporters Committee letter argued:
“The public interest in what happened at the Upper Big Branch Mine is
monumental. The presence of government investigators cannot substitute for the role of the news media in examining MSFIA’s enforcement of the law at the mine, and whether the accident is properly investigated.”
And:
“The news medias critical role in timely informing the nation about public safety concerns only seres to enhance MSHAs mission of enforcing compliance with mandatory safety and health standards and promoting improved safety and health conditions in the nations mines.”
The Gazette was writing about the need for public hearings into mine disasters long before the Upper Big Branch Disaster, as this story, http://wvgazette.com/News/TheSagoMineDisaster/200601070029 about the Sago Disaster demonstrates.
Bloggers and others may be all about hoping that the FBI uses its investigation to put Don Blankenship in jail … but legitimate news organizations are about providing information to their readers, listeners and viewers … and part of doing that is advocating for open government, even when open government might be uncomfortable for those who are the subject of that openness.
And while much of the national media coverage (the NPR stories in particular) have focused on what most West Virginians already knew — that Massey has a lot of safety violations — part of our job here ought to be to push and ask why MSHA didn’t do enough to prevent those violations and avoid this disaster.
In fact, the federal and state courts have ruled over and over that the secrecy that is sometimes afforded to law enforcement and other government investigations is not absolute, especially when the secrecy allows potential wrongdoing or inaction by regulatory agencies that are supposed to protect the public.
A couple of examples:
– In a case called Cooper Cameron Corp. v. Department of Labor, OSHA, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals found that there is a “cognizable public interest in monitoring agencies’ enforcement of the law in specific instances.” Interestingly, in that case, the court forced OSHA to release witness statements concerning a chemical plant explosion in Houston.
– In another case called U.S. Department of State v. Ray, the U.S. Supreme Court found a public interest in the release of witness interviews that would show whether the State Department was adequately monitoring Haiti’s compliance with its commitment not to persecute refugees.
– Courts have also reached similar conclusions in cases involving allegations of fraudulent claims to military decorations, monitoring of union elections, and the relationship between the VA and some of that agency’s contractors.
Newspapers and other media organizations ought not be in the business of supporting secrecy. You’re of course free to think otherwise, but we’ll just have to agree to disagree on that one.
Ken.
Mr Webb, as a surface miner and the son of a surface miner who lost his life on the job,your comment calling surface miners “demolition crews” is a slap in our face! If you look at yearly production for the nation. Surface coal mining dominates underground production. Surface mining is highly productive and efficent. Men who do this work do it for their familys. The also like the work, and don’t really want to do anything else. I know that if surface mining is regulated out of WV then my family and I will go somewhere where we are welcome.
Scott, I really mean no offense by my comment, I really don’t. I don’t want you to leave WV. I understand that you need a job. The problem is that we have been beholden to the coal industry for so long that somehow we have accepted to go along with their profiteering from destroying our mountains. There is only so much coal. Removing our mountains to retrieve the last of it is not a smart thing to do. It makes no sense, except to Fat Cat Wall Street investors and people like Don Blankenship who divide’s you and I in order to continue plundering our mountains for cash.
Everyone needs a job, but when we resort to knocking our mountains down and forcing those that live below to breath silica blasting dust, sink their wells, and poison our streams with selenium and other heavy metals and toxins then we have a real problem. My Dad, my Grandfather, my Uncles, my cousins, all coal miners, underground. I am sorry for your loss. MTR sites are just as dangerous as underground. I wish there was a better way for all of us. We need new jobs that don’t require our workers to risk their lives for a paycheck. That’s something I think about every day. If we could get our so called political leaders to do the work of the people they would bring new good paying jobs to WV. Coal in Central Appalachia is on the decline. Each year we will be mining less and less coal, and with less and less people. If Massey could replace a worker with a stick of dynamite or a piece of machinery they’ll do that. What are we doing to insure a future for our children and grandchildren? That is the question we should be asking ourselves because that is our responsibility. And that is the responsibility of our “leaders”.
[...] Actually, as far as epithets go by drive-by Web commentators who never left the house, you could do worse. The event earned its epithet, perhaps, with the 10-foot-long dead canary float by West Virginia State University art students. This float, one surmises, goes out to Don Blankenship? [...]