Cecil Roberts, International President of the United Mine Workers of America, right, listens as Massey Energy Company Chief Executive Officer Don Blankenship testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, May 20, 2010, before the Senate Health and Human Services subcommittee hearing on mine safety. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
While testimony yesterday in federal court in Beckley focused on advance reporting of MSHA inspections at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine, the defense lawyer for company security director Hughie Elbert Stover raised an interesting question in his opening statement to the jury: Is prosecuting a security guard the best the federal government can do following the worst U.S. coal-mining disaster in nearly 40 years?
Stover lawyer Bill Wilmoth asked where the evidence is about what really caused that terrible explosion on April 5, 2010. He said that information seems to be locked in a closet somewhere, certainly not to to be heard of during this week’s criminal trial against his client. It was an interesting strategy, especially since Wilmoth had earlier tried to prevent any mention of the disaster during the Stover trial.
But it was also very timely — because as trial continues today in Beckley the United Mine Workers of America is doing its best to ensure that evidence about what really happened at Upper Big Branch gets out. Right now, top UMWA officials are in Charleston, briefing families of the 29 miners who died on the findings of the union’s own extensive investigation of the disaster. A press conference is planned for later today. We’ll have much more on their report after that press conference.
The union’s findings aren’t surprising:
It is the determination of the union that the sparking of the shearer bits and bit blocks, aided by missing and ineffective water sprays, a lack of water pressure and inadequate ventilation, ignited a pocket of methane at the tailgate near the longwall. the ignition traveled into the gob where it encountered an explosive methane-air mixture, resulting in an explosion. The explosive forces picked up and suspended float coal dust in the mine atmosphere in sufficient quantities to initiate a massive dust explosion.
How could something like this happen in this day and age?
The dangerous conditions that contributed to the explosion existed at the mine on a daily basis. These conditions, which represented gross violations of, mandatory health and safety standards, were not accidental. They were permitted to exist by a corporate management at Massey that created a culture that demanded production at any cost and tolerated a callous disregard for the health and safety of the miners employed at the operation.
The UMWA’s 154-page report supports previous findings from the Davitt McAteer team and preliminary results from MSHA, outlining major problems with the Upper Big Branch mine’s longwall shearer, serious violations of requirements for rock-dusting underground and significant and repeated failures to properly ventilate the huge Raleigh County mine.
But there are some interesting new things in the UMWA report as well:
– The union appears to make a much more specific allegation than either MSHA or McAteer have so far about a specific illegal change in mine ventilation its investigators believe led to the methane present in the longwall area and the gob, the fuel for the initial ignition and explosion.
– UMW officials included fascinating maps and descriptions in their report that show more clearly than I’ve seen before the massive size and scope of the explosion — along with a discussion of how the blast essentially circled around on itself, following the trail of coal dust and creating a growing path of death and destruction underground. The union noted, for example, that the blast traveled up the a former coal-transportation tunnel called the “Glory Hole” and scorched the roof on an adjacent Massey mine.
– After the explosion, investigation teams found in the longwall area of the mine a methane monitor that appeared to be almost new — or certainly undamaged despite its location near the heart of the explosion. Union officials aren’t sure how it got there, or how it got to be so free of damage, dirt and dust. But they noted it was found near where it appears that a brattice cloth curtain was hung so that it would direct all airflow toward the sensor, diluting any methane at that point.
(more…)
Subscribe to the Coal Tattoo
