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Mon 13 Aug, 2007 10:17 am
Now we know why the obnoxious part owner of the mine, Robert Murray, used news conferences to try to protect himself from being sued instead of focusing on the miners.---BBB
Memo shows mine already had roof problems in March
By Robert Gehrke
The Salt Lake Tribune
08/12/2007
Despite early reports, experts suspect mine collapse said operators at the Crandall Canyon mine experienced serious structural problems in the mine in March and entirely abandoned work in an area about 900 feet from where six miners remained trapped Saturday.
A memo obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune shows that mine owners were trying to work around "poor roof conditions" before halting mining of the northern tunnels in early March after a "large bump occurred . . . resulting in heavy damage" in those tunnels.
A bump or bounce occurs when the intense pressure on the coal pillars supporting the mine causes the pillars to burst, "sending coal and rock flying with explosive force," according to that National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
The memo indicates that mine operators knew the tremendous pressures of a mountain bearing down on the mine were creating problems with the roof, and they were searching for a way to safely keep the mine from falling in as they cut away the coal pillars supporting the structure.
"It's dangerous. Damn dangerous I would say," Robert Ferriter, now director of the mine safety program at the Colorado School of Mines and a 27-year veteran of the Mine Safety and Health Administration. "What is MSHA doing in all this? They're the ones who are supposed to catch this sort of thing."
The problems between the 133rd and 139th crosscuts, numbers given to passages cut across the entry tunnels, prompted operators to quit mining the northern tunnels of the Main West corridor. The operators also hired Agapito Associates Inc., a Colorado mining engineering firm, which wrote a memo for the company explaining steps that could be taken to allow the south tunnels to be retreat mined safely.
It is near crosscut 138 on the south side of the main corridor, where rescue workers believe the six miners were trapped, that the enormous pressures on the roof of the mine created a "bump" early Monday morning and caused a catastrophic cave-in.
The miners were working in a spot about 900 feet from where the dangerous roof conditions were noted in March, according to a detailed map of the mine. The damage from Monday's cave-in stretched hundreds of yards, with rubble blocking entries more than half a mile away and numerous additional bumps making rescue work unsafe.
Repeated calls to UtahAmerican Energy Inc., the mine operators, seeking information on the roof issues were not returned. Robert Murray, part owner of the mine, said he was not aware of any prior roof concerns. "It's the first time I've heard of this," Murray said of the March incident.
A message left at Agapito Associates last week was not returned.
Richard Stickler, assistant secretary of the U.S. Labor Department and head of MSHA, acknowledged the March incident, but said it occurred in an area hundreds of feet away.
But in a mine that stretches for miles, conditions in both areas would be "nearly identical," Ferriter said. "If you had problems up there on the north side, I would expect you would have the same problem on the south side."
The memo and mine map both indicate that, along the northern tunnels, there undoubtedly was retreat mining - a process in which support pillars are carved away by a mining machine, recovering the last remnants of the coal seam and causing the roof to collapse.
Murray had initially denied there had been retreat mining done, but MSHA officials said that technique was used in the mine.
On June 15, MSHA district manager Allyn Davis accepted a "roof control amendment," permitting retreat mining along the southern tunnel as well, documents show.
The retreat mining along the northern tunnels through the spring had progressed to crosscut 138 when unstable roof conditions prompted a decision not to cut down the next several supports.
When the pillars at the next two crosscuts were pulled in early March, "A large bump occurred at this point resulting in heavy damage to the entries located between (crosscuts) 133 and 139," the Agapito memo says.
To do damage to entries across six crosscuts, nearly 800 feet in the Crandall mine, the March bump would have to have been huge. It is unclear if it caused the roof to fall or the floors to buckle or heave. Such events are supposed to be reported to the MSHA, but MSHA's public data shows the last reported roof fall was in 1998.
An MSHA official began an inspection of the roof in the Crandall Canyon mine in late May, which was still under way, according to MSHA records. No violations had been reported. Stickler would not discuss the inspection.
But roof conditions prompted operators of Crandall Canyon to abandon the retreat mining on the north barrier.
"What that would tell me right up front is that's a bad section of the mine, and it's so bad they decided to not even try to mine it," said Bruce Dial, a former federal mine safety official.
To safely mine the south barrier, the Agapito consultants wrote, the width of the support pillars should be increased by more than a third, from 92 feet to 129 feet. Such an increase "helps to isolate bumps to the face and reduce the risk of larger bumps overrunning crews in outby locations," the memo says.
It is not clear from the mine map if the wider pillars were being used.
Mining was progressing along the south end of the main tunnel last week when it is believed a major bump caused the cave-in, trapping the miners working about 900 feet from where the March problems occurred.
"It was a bounce," Jameson Ward, one of four miners who escaped the mine, told The Tribune. "Bad things happen. Nothing can be done about it."
Ferriter isn't so sure. He said the retreat mining practice UtahAmerican was using in the mine is suspect in light of the amount of pressure created by 2,100 feet of mountain above the mine.
"The whole thing, to me, looks like you're taking a real risk because you have all this high stress there," said Ferriter.
Both areas to the north and south of the main tunnel had been "longwalled," meaning the coal had been extracted and the areas had caved in, leaving no support on either side of the main tunnel. Digging out the last supports for the main tunnels is extremely dangerous.
"I'm surprised that they would try to take that last section," Ferriter said. "I would've thought that would have triggered someone from MSHA to say, 'Wait a minute, let's take a look at this.' . . . I think this needs to be looked at in a lot more detail."
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KRISTEN MOULTON and GLEN WARCHOL contributed to this report.
Utah Mine Owner: troubling Safety Record, Political Clout
Utah Mine Owner: Troubling Safety Record, Useful Political Clout
HuffingtonPost.com
by Max Follmer
August 14, 2007 08:42 PM
In 2003, when safety inspectors ordered the owner of a Utah coal mine where six workers have been trapped for more than a week to shut down one of his Ohio operations because of repeated safety problems, local press reports say he did not hesitate to flex his political muscle to get the inspectors off his back.
West Virginia Public Radio reporter Jeff Young filed a story at the time that said Murray Energy Corp. CEO Bob Murray had a meeting in Morgantown, W. Va. with Tim Thompson, then a district manager for the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration.
Young obtained notes from the meeting which showed Murray threatening to have MSHA employees fired.
"I will have your jobs. They are gone. The clock is ticking," Young quotes Murray as saying at the meeting.
The notes then go on to say Murray dropped the name of a pair of powerful Republicans in order to underscore his own political clout.
"Mitch McConnell calls me one of the five finest men in America, and last time I checked he was sleeping with your boss," Murray told the inspectors, referring to the senior GOP senator from Kentucky. The quote was repeated in an Oct. 2006 Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader article on McConnell's political influence.
McConnell - the Republican leader in the Senate - is married to Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, who oversees MSHA. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, McConnell has received $176,800 in campaign donations from mining interests since 2001.
Thompson was later transferred to an office away from Murray's mines, and retired from MSHA in 2006.
The Bush Administration denied that Murray played a role in Thomspon's reassignment.
Murray has personally donated $115,050 to Republican political candidates over the past three election cycles. He has given another $724,500 to the GOP over the past ten years through political action committees connected to his businesses.
"The ironic part is I am a Republican," Thompson told the Herald-Leader's John Cheves in October 2006. "But I don't think you should bring up politics in a meeting like that, involving safety."
A belt foreman at the mine in question - Powhatan No. 6 in Belmont County, Ohio - bled to death in 2001 after a conveyor belt had ripped off his arm.
A judge later ruled that the company had not been negligent in that case.
Murray's safety record has come under fire at several other mines he owns through at least a half dozen mining companies.
Mines owned by Murray's companies produce more than 20 million tons of coal annually, according to a tally by the Cleveland Plain-Dealer. His companies include Ohio Valley Coal Co., Maple Creek Mining, Inc., KenAmerican Resources, Inc., American Coal Co. and PennAmerican Coal.
Robert Gehrke at the Salt Lake Tribune reported over the weekend that Murray's Galatia mine in southern Illinois has racked up 2,787 violations over the past two years. MSHA has proposed more than $2.4 million in fines at Galatia, according to Gehrke's reporting.
Another Murray-owned company - Ken American Resources - and four of its top employees were convicted in a federal court in Kentucky of conspiring to violate federal mine safety rules.
A judge later threw out part of the verdict, but the company was ordered to pay $306,000 in fines, an amount federal prosecutors considered too lenient.
Speaking to The Huffington Post last week, a spokesman for the United Mine Workers of America labor union - which does not represent workers at the Crandall Canyon mine in Utah - called Murray a "volatile" personality who routinely opposed increased safety regulations.
"Anything that will cost Bob Murray any extra money he will find reason to find fault with it," said Phil Smith, the union's communications director.
Mine Safety Czar Richard Stickler
Mine Safety Czar Richard Stickler: Another Bush Fox Guarding the Henhouse
Huffington Post
by Max Follmer
August 15, 2007 02:28 PM
The man who will oversee the federal government's investigation into the disaster that has trapped six workers in a Utah coal mine for over a week was twice rejected for his current job by senators concerned about his own safety record when he managed mines in the private sector.
President George W. Bush resorted to a recess appointment in October 2006 to anoint Richard Stickler as the nation's mine safety czar after it became clear he could not receive enough support even in a GOP-controlled Senate.
In the wake of the January 2006 Sago mine disaster in West Virginia, senators from both sides of the aisle expressed concern that Stickler was not the right person to combat climbing death rates in the nation's mines.
Democrats, led by West Virginia Sens. Robert Byrd and Jay Rockefeller, and Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, questioned the safety record of the mines Stickler ran when he was a coal company executive.
Over the course of his career in the private sector, Stickler managed various mining operations for Bethlehem Steel subsidiary BethEnergy Mines, Inc.
The Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette reported in January 2006 that three workers died at BethEnergy mines managed by Stickler during the 1980s and 1990s.
Gazette reporter Ken Ward, Jr. wrote that in the worst of the incidents, one mechanic was killed, and eight other workers were injured when the portal bus that was carrying them to the mine-shaft bottom derailed. A report later said the portal bus had not been properly maintained.
Stickler began his career as a general laborer at BethEnergy, eventually rising to manage the company's operations in Pennsylvania and Boone County, West Virginia.
He worked briefly for Massey Energy subsidiary Performance Coal in 1996 and 1997 before becoming head of the Pennsylvania mine safety office. Stickler retired from the post in 2003.
In addition to concerns about the safety record at his mines, Stickler also faced opposition from senators, union leaders and relatives of those killed in mine accidents who felt an industry insider should not oversee safety inspectors.
United Mine Workers of America President Cecil Roberts said that miners "could not tolerate" another industry executive overseeing their health and safety.
"Too often these mining executives place priority on productivity, but fail to focus on miners' health and safety," Roberts told Mike Hall at the AFL-CIO's blog in June 2006.
The wife and daughter of a miner killed at Sago wrote a letter to lawmakers that same month urging them to reject Stickler's nomination.
"Mr. Stickler is a longtime coal executive and because of his connections with the coal industry, we are concerned that his primary objectives may be solely on compliance and production, not on miners' health and safety,'' Debbie Hamner and Sara Bailey wrote in a letter quoted by the Gazette.
Bush first nominated Stickler to head the Mine Safety and Health Administration in September 2005. He received renewed attention from lawmakers following the Sago disaster. By May 2006 it was clear that Byrd and other Senate opponents would not allow Stickler's nomination to pass, and Republicans withdrew a scheduled vote on his job.
In July 2006, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao hired Stickler as a consultant and adviser, but insisted through a spokeswoman that she was not attempting to circumvent the nomination process.
In August and September of the same year, the Senate twice voted to send the Stickler nomination back to the White House.
In October 2006, Bush used a recess appointment to install Stickler -- a decision that was quickly denounced by senators from both sides of the aisle.
Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, a Republican, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that he "didn't think Mr. Stickler was the right man for the job." Another Pennsylvania Republican, Rick Santorum, also told the paper he was "disappointed" the White House had not let senators debate and vote on the nomination.
In a written statement Wednesday, Byrd told The Huffington Post that MSHA's response to the Crandall Canyon incident will be a test of Stickler's "worthiness to be properly confirmed by the United States Senate."
Byrd also expressed concern about the slow pace of the implementation of new mining safety laws established in the wake of the Sago disaster.
"I told Mr. Stickler about my concerns earlier this summer," he said. "Until I see better progress from MSHA, I will retain my hold on Mr. Stickler's nomination."
Media Neglecting Vital Part of the Utah Mine Collapse Story
Why Are the New York Times and So Much of the Traditional Media Neglecting a Vital Part of the Utah Mine Collapse Story?
by Arianna Huffington
Posted August 14, 2007
Yesterday, while speaking at the Aspen Institute's Forum on Communications and Society, I commented on how the mainstream media have, with a few exceptions, been focusing on only one aspect of the Crandall Canyon Mine tragedy -- the desperate attempt to rescue the trapped miners -- while paying scant attention to investigating the reasons why these miners were trapped in the first place.
I specifically mentioned Sunday's New York Times piece by Martin Stolz, who had been dispatched to Huntington to cover the story. Stolz's report was filled with details about the progress rescuers had made through the collapsed mine (650 ft), and the capabilities of the hi-res camera being lowered into the mine (can pick up images from 100 ft away) -- but not one word about what led to the collapse, including the role retreat mining might have played in it, or the 324 safety violations federal inspectors have issued for the mine since 2004.
The story, like most of the TV coverage, featured Bob Murray, the colorful co-owner of the mine. Stolz painted a picture of Murray emerging from the mine "with a coal-blackened face and in miner's coveralls to discuss the latest finding with the families of the missing miners."
Cue the swelling music and start the casting session. Your mind reflexively begins to wonder who would play Murray in the Crandall Canyon TV movie. Wilfred Brimley? Robert Duvall? Paul Newman?
Of course, Murray's role in all this is much darker than that of the compassionate boss given to delivering script-ready lines like, "Conditions are the most difficult I have seen in my 50 years of mining" and "There are many reasons to have hope still" (as he has been quoted saying in two other Times stories).
He is a politically-connected Big Energy player whose company, Murray Energy Corp., has 19 mines in five states, which have incurred millions of dollars in fines for safety violations over the last 18 months.
Probably won't see that in the TV movie.
Murray has also continued to insist that the mine collapse was the result of an earthquake -- a claim disputed by seismologists.
So why has so much of the coverage focused on folksy Bob Murray, the stalwart and kindly mine owner, instead of mining mogul Robert Murray, who may have been at least partly responsible for decisions that led to the disaster?
It's because, as Jon Stewart has put it, one of the best ways to deal with members of the media is show them a shiny object over here, which distracts them from investigating the real story over there. And the hopeful, coal-covered, and always camera-ready Murray has been very shiny indeed. Especially when his face is blackened from a recent PR stint down the mine.
Back in Aspen, at a party for conference participants last night, Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who had been in the room during my panel, came up to me and told me -- more than a little defensively -- that the Times had in fact reported on the safety violations last Wednesday.
Yes, I replied, but that was a few paragraphs in a single story five days ago. But while the Times has continued to cover the rescue, there was no follow up on the possible causes on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or Monday.
During that time, the Times has been thoroughly scooped by the Salt Lake Tribune, which uncovered a memo revealing that there had been serious structural problems at the Crandall Canyon Mine in March -- in an area just 900 feet from the section of the mine that collapsed last week. And even AP did much better than the paper of record. AP reporter Chris Kahn wrote about the role retreat mining -- "a sometimes dangerous mining technique that involves pulling out leftover sections and pillars of coal that hold up the roof of a mine" -- might have played in the collapse.
Despite so many questions left unanswered about the mine's safety and the decisions the mine's owners made, the Times did no follow up. Indeed, New York Times readers -- and shareholders -- would have been better (much better) served if Times editors had spared the expense of sending reporters to Huntington and had just republished the reports from the Salt Lake Tribune and AP.
Instead, last night, Sulzberbger preferred to rationalize away his paper's choices. "I'm told that 324 violations are not a lot," he said to me.
Maybe not if you work in an office on West 43rd Street; but if you make a living by going underground to excavate coal, even one serious safety violation is one too many. And of the 324 violations, 107 were considered, in the words of a federal mine safety agency spokesman, "significant and substantial."
And if, as Sulzberger claimed, 324 violations are not a lot, why not do a story on that -- questioning whether we should be wasting taxpayer money looking for insignificant and insubstantial transgressions?
Let me stress that I am only focusing on the Times because of my exchange with Sulzberger; in fact, most of the MSM's coverage of the tragedy has tilted towards the shiny objects causing them to neglect the issues that might help prevent yet another story about the desperate attempt to rescue yet another group of trapped miners.
So we continue to get cloying coverage like the segment on AC360 last night. This is how Anderson Cooper introduced Murray: "He's really been the public face of this ordeal, keeping the families up to date -- he meets with them once or twice a day -- trying to explain the latest rescue efforts." So Murray got to go all aw shucks: "Mr. Cooper, I appreciate you having me on your program. And I appreciate the interest of all Americans in our tragedy."
But we get precious little on the Murray who had enough political muscle to get a Mine Safety and Health Administration district manager who had cracked down on safety issues at one of Murray's mines reassigned (clearly, contributing $213,000 to Republican candidates over the last ten years, as well as another $724,500 to Republican candidates and causes through political action committees connected to Murray's businesses, has its benefits). The Murray who rails against the United Mine Workers Association, claiming it wants "to damage Murray Energy, Utah American and the United States coal industry for their own motives." The Murray who called Hillary Clinton "anti-American" for saying America needs a president who will fight for workers' rights, and telling a Senate committee this summer that Al Gore and Congressional Democrats are bent on "the destruction of American lives and more death as a result of his hysterical global goofiness with no environmental benefit."
So many angles for the media to pursue -- and that's before we even get to the miners' families. A couple of family members have already spoken out about the fears for the mine's safety circulating in the community prior to the collapse.
If these stories and preliminary reports are right and it is proved that the tragic collapse at Crandall Canyon was caused by the owners' decision to proceed with retreat mining despite concerns about structural safety at the mine, then Mr. Murray should be spending less time talking to reporters, and a lot more time talking to his lawyers.
Feds Blame Operator for Mine Disaster
Do you remember this obnoxious liar, Bob Murray?
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