Crew Rushes to Get to Trapped W.Va. Miners

[Texsox]

By VICKI SMITH

 

TALLMANSVILLE, W.Va. (AP) - After waiting an agonizing 12 hours for dangerous gases to clear, rescuers Monday entered a coal mine where an explosion had trapped 13 miners underground.

 

The condition of the miners was not immediately known. Four co-workers tried to reach them but were stopped by a wall of debris, and the blast knocked out the mine's communication equipment, preventing authorities from contacting the miners.

 

It was not known how much air they had, how big a space they were in, or how far down they were trapped. The miners had air-purifying equipment but no oxygen tanks, a co-worker said.

 

Hours after the blast, eight search-and-rescue teams stood ready to go into the Sago Mine but had to wait while dangerously high levels of carbon monoxide - a byproduct of combustion - were vented through holes drilled into the ground, authorities said.

 

The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration sent a rescue robot to the mine, situated about 100 miles northeast of Charleston.

[Rex Kickass]

From what I heard, inspections turned up around 50 violations in the mine over the last 6 months. It was a shallow mine too, which believe it or not, makes these things worse because the mine is less stable when its shallow.

 

Or so NPR told me.

[southsider2k5]

[Rex Kickass]

WOR radio told me that it didn't look good. No signs of life found yet and a very high Carbon Monoxide content in the mine air after they finally broke through.

[WCSox]

WOR radio told me that it didn't look good. No signs of life found yet and a very high Carbon Monoxide content in the mine air after they finally broke through.

 

I didn't feel optimistic last night after the crew they sent in had to turn back because the CO levels were too high. Unless CO is a lot less dense than air (I think it's just the opposite), they probably died from asphyxiation yesterday.

 

[Steff]

From what I heard, inspections turned up around 50 violations in the mine over the last 6 months. It was a shallow mine too, which believe it or not, makes these things worse because the mine is less stable when its shallow.

 

Or so NPR told me.

 

 

 

A mile down is considered a shallow mine..?

 

I don't know anything about mining, but I would think that's pretty deep?

[FlaSoxxJim]

I didn't feel optimistic last night after the crew they sent in had to turn back because the CO levels were too high.  Unless CO is a lot less dense than air (I think it's just the opposite), they probably died from asphyxiation yesterday.

 

 

CO, N2, and O2 are all in the same ballpark, density-wise. What makes CO the major killer it is is that it preferentially and irreversibly binds to O2 uptake sites on red blood cells.

 

I haven't felt optimistic about this incident since they first reported it.

[FlaSoxxJim]

A mile down is considered a shallow mine..?

 

I don't know anything about mining, but I would think that's pretty deep? 

 

It's not a mile deep vertically. The miners are more than a mile into a shallow mine that runs a long way horizontally. Vertically, they are less than 200 feet from the surface.

Edited January 3, 2006 by FlaSoxxJim

[Steff]

It's not a mile deep vertically.  The miners are more than a mile into a shallow mine that runs a long way horizontally.  Vertically, they are less than 200 feet from the surface.

 

 

 

Ahhh. gotcha. This story,

 

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/01/02/mine.explosion.ap/ ,

 

"An explosion at a coal mine trapped 13 miners more than a mile underground, a county emergency official said Monday."

 

is a bit misleading.

 

Thanks, Jim.

[Balta1701]

From what I heard, inspections turned up around 50 violations in the mine over the last 6 months. It was a shallow mine too, which believe it or not, makes these things worse because the mine is less stable when its shallow.

 

Or so NPR told me.

The mine received 208 citations from MSHA in 2005, up from 68 citations in 2004. They paid something like $3300 to cover them all I believe. Some of those fines included penalties for:

 

Accumulation of combustible materials - $60.00.  (I believe they were fined for this in 2004 and 2005)

 

Mine ventilation plan; submission and approval - $440.00. (I believe they were lacking one, were fined for it in 2004, and again in 2005) 

 

Lack of protection from falls of roof, face and ribs.  There was nothing holding up the mine in places where the workers were working.  Also no roof bolting.  These cost $285.00.

 

Lack of safeguards.  There was nothing specific here, but this is what was cited. - $60. 

 

No guards to protect workers from emchanical equipment - $60.

I'd link to the specific report, but it seems that the MSHA may have taken it down this morning. But just think about this...it looks like the fees that the company owning this mine paid for things which could have led to this explosion were roughly the cost of a few traffic tickets.

 

Update: Here's a link to 1 press report on the number of violations. Supposedly inspectors considered 96 of the violations "Significant and Substantial", whatever that means.

Edited January 3, 2006 by Balta1701

[FlaSoxxJim]

NPR yesterday also said there were 9 different roof collapse events in that mine in 2005.

 

Talk about an accident waiting to happen, and the insignificant wrist slaps they got for all those violations.

[Steff]

NPR yesterday also said there were 9 different roof collapse events in that mine in 2005.

 

Talk about an accident waiting to happen, and the insignificant wrist slaps they got for all those violations.

 

 

Yikes..

 

Poor families of the men/women (??) that are miners. I imagine they know the risks.. I could not be married to someone who did something so dangerous.

 

for all of them.

[Balta1701]

Yikes.. 

 

Poor families of the men/women (??) that are miners. I imagine they know the risks.. I could not be married to someone who did something so dangerous.

 

for all of them.

They know that there are risks to being a mine worker, but the question would be...how many of the miners know about the fines/inspection failures going on at that particular mine?

[Steff]

They know that there are risks to being a mine worker, but the question would be...how many of the miners know about the fines/inspection failures going on at that particular mine?

 

 

Forgetting about the inspection failures for a minute.. I find it hard to believe they didn't know about a roof collapse... or maybe they didn't know about 1.. maybe even 2 of them.. but NINE of them...

[Rex Kickass]

If your situation is working at someplace that might be potentially unsafe or losing your family's home, what would you do?

 

Mine safety needs some teeth. Potentially deadly situations the company lets go only gets them a couple hundred dollar fine? That's ridiculous.

[Steff]

If your situation is working at someplace that might be potentially unsafe or losing your family's home, what would you do?

 

 

Life or home...?? Are you kidding me???

 

 

Life.

[southsider2k5]

If your situation is working at someplace that might be potentially unsafe or losing your family's home, what would you do?

 

Mine safety needs some teeth. Potentially deadly situations the company lets go only gets them a couple hundred dollar fine? That's ridiculous.

 

If there are 13 dead people down there, things will definately change. If not through regular laws, you can bet the lawsuits will motivate companies to change their ways.

[Rex Kickass]

Life or home...?? Are you kidding me???

Life.

 

 

That just makes me think you'd never mine coal, period.

 

It's a risky job when its done safely. Roof collapses happen in safe mines sometimes too.

[Steff]

That just makes me think you'd never mine coal, period.

 

 

Hope you didn't think long about that one...

 

I'd rather scoop up raw sewage with my bare hands then do a job that would risk loss of life of myself or someone in my family.

[Rex Kickass]

Hope you didn't think long about that one...

 

I'd rather scoop up raw sewage with my bare hands then do a job that would risk loss of life of myself or someone in my family.

 

That would stop you from the sewage job too. The smell would kill you.

[Steff]

That would stop you from the sewage job too. The smell would kill you.

 

 

Eventually, I'm sure it would.

 

As well I could be killed tomorrow driving to work in my cushy office job. My point is that I would choose life over home and would rather be poor living in a GE fridge box on lower Wacker BEFORE doing a job with risks such as this.

[WCSox]

CO, N2, and O2 are all in the same ballpark, density-wise.  What makes CO the major killer it is is that it preferentially and irreversibly binds to O2 uptake sites on red blood cells.

 

I was trying to determine if there would be more or less CO towards the bottom of the mine, but it appears that the distribution should be more or less even. That would be bad news, given that the CO level as too high for the rescue workers last night.

 

I hate to say it, but I'd be very surprised if anybody survived.

 

NPR yesterday also said there were 9 different roof collapse events in that mine in 2005.

 

Talk about an accident waiting to happen, and the insignificant wrist slaps they got for all those violations.

 

Unfortunately, I imagine that things are 10 times worse in a place like China where safety isn't taken seriously and the government gets away with doing whatever they want.

[Balta1701]

If there are 13 dead people down there, things will definately change.  If not through regular laws, you can bet the lawsuits will motivate companies to change their ways.

The lawsuits can put that company out of business, but they can't necessarily make the government increase the scale of its fines or make the government stop giving mines 24 hours warning before inspections (as is currently the law I believe).

 

Let's just say that the lawsuits put the company out of business for this mine accident...if the government doesn't increase its enforcement and fines, what will happen? Another company will come along, start up mining, and will do so without paying enough attention to the inspections again, will pay the fines (miniscule compared with the cost of actually running a safe mine), and we'll wind up with exactly the same thing happening.

 

If the government is fining mines that could explode $3600 or so based on conditions that could explode, but the cost of fixing those problems is several orders of magnitude higher, you can be safe in guessing that this isn't the only mine where these problems exist, it's just the one which was unlucky.

[Balta1701]

I was trying to determine if there would be more or less CO towards the bottom of the mine, but it appears that the distribution should be more or less even.  That would be bad news, given that the CO level as too high for the rescue workers last night.

If the mine covered significant vertical distances, then you could have seen a fractionation between the different gases due to gravity and their molecular weights (depending on non-ideality of the gas - probably negligible here). But you'd probably need several kilometers of distance in order to really see an effect, something we certainly don't have here.

 

If you gave me perfectly ideal mixtures of CO, CO2, O2, and N2...just based on their molecular weights CO and N2 would migrate to the top of the column, O2 and especially CO2 would move towards the bottom, but again, you need a long path for this to actually be seen.

[southsider2k5]

The lawsuits can put that company out of business, but they can't necessarily make the government increase the scale of its fines or make the government stop giving mines 24 hours warning before inspections (as is currently the law I believe).

 

Let's just say that the lawsuits put the company out of business for this mine accident...if the government doesn't increase its enforcement and fines, what will happen?  Another company will come along, start up mining, and will do so without paying enough attention to the inspections again, will pay the fines (miniscule compared with the cost of actually running a safe mine), and we'll wind up with exactly the same thing happening.

 

If the government is fining mines that could explode $3600 or so based on conditions that could explode, but the cost of fixing those problems is several orders of magnitude higher, you can be safe in guessing that this isn't the only mine where these problems exist, it's just the one which was unlucky.

Those companies have costs related to doing business that have a lot to do with their safety. you can't tell me something like insurance won't go up a lot for these companies if they don't meet the regulations that the insurance companies set forth.

 

There also could be a big exodus of employees who refuse to work with a company because of their safety problems, which always have the spotlight shown on them a little brighter after a disaster like this, which makes it either more expensive to hire employees or makes the company put more tangible effort into safety, which translates to more costs as well.

 

There are plenty of ways to regulate business, they don't all have to be governmental.