the wv miners

[snaggerbob]

I too work in the mines and can't imagine what these guys were feeling. They apparantly tried to barricade( a barrier) themselves in an attempt to keep the carbonmonoxide from getting to them. Unfortunately that failed. One more thing, each miner has a self contained breathing apparatus available to them. Unlike the self rescuer they carry on their belts, the SCSR provides oxygen for an hour or more. My sympathy goes out to all the families.

 

[Purogamer]

How many of your local papers went to print with the "12 miners alive" story? Both of mine did, only one of the online versions has corrected it...

 

[dfergie]

This is Terrible news... Cell Phones make it hard to keep info good or bad in... We had a fatality a couple of months ago and the news was all over town before the deceased had even been moved from the accident site...Those SCSR's sound interesting, we do not have as we are a non gassy mine...

 

[gpflepsen]

My morning paper had the "12 Found Alive". That was the only news I had of the situation until later when TV news said they had died.

Mining is a tough ocupation, no doubt. A good movie is October Sky. It is not about mining, but is set in a mining community. I does show what some of the families of miners go through.

 

[dfergie]

Just watched a news confrence from the hospital... the Survivor is not "out of the woods" yet but should make it...

 

[snaggerbob]

Hopefully we will find out what really happened if he survives. I know all my buddies at work today sure felt terrible. It's hard to believe in this day and age that we still kill so many miners. After all we provide 50% of the power that runs this great land. No power no satelllite guys. No power no TV. No power no lights.... get the picture. It's a dangerous job but I think there was negligence in this case. Someone needs to be accountable.

 

[Stargazer]

It looks like my governor is getting a LOT of heat right now from all of this misinformation.

 

[Bob Haller]

Ahh ALL MINES SHOULD BE REQUIRED, to have pre placed emergency boxes. Like 1 for every mile of corridor. A rugged metal reinforced box, with oxygen bottles, high energy food like candy, drinkable water, and useful emergency tools and supplies, like space blankets.

 

[snaggerbob]

I work in a union mine and we have something called a self contained breathing apparatus. It provides pure oxygen, good for about 1 to 2 hours. They are on every means of transportation into the mine. One for every man riding on that vehicle. They are also placed on travel routes into the mine sections. I believe they are every 500ft. I am pretty sure the mine in W.Virginia was a non-union mine, but I think the Federal mine agency insists on the same regulation for all coal mines. Unless these guys were unable to see or were trapped I would have thought they would have tried to get out of the contaminated atmosphere with their SCSR's. We were always taught that barricading is a last resort.

 

[dfergie]

At one time we had a refuge chamber out in the mine... now its at the shaft area... our sister mine is the same...I was involved heavily in cutting a slope down to where they are supposed to break thru to us.. this point is 9 miles from our shafts and about 3.5 from theirs... I work about 5 miles out now...

 

[snaggerbob]

How deep is your mine, Max? What type of miner do you run? I run a 12CM Joy.

 

[dfergie]

1650 at the Shaft, I run a Joy with the Remote... cant think of model right now but it stands about 60 inches tall and weighs 80,000 #'s I was down all day yesterday so I had to run an Eimco...gotta go to work.... will remember today and post...

 

[dfergie]

Also a 12 CM 27 Joy...(a miner designed for coal running in much harder stuff) had to run an Eimco 2810 for half the day , then run the Joy on the umbilical as maint B.O.'ed the Battery Cable for the Remote... a real Drag...

 

[snaggerbob]

We are only 350'. What do you mean by much harder stuff? How long do you make your cuts? We are allowed 40' before we have to roofbolt it. Unlike W.Vir. we hardly ever run into methane. I'm sure if we had lightening strike behind a seal like what they think happened at the Sago mine, we would have an explosion too.

 

[dfergie]

We are cutting in our 10th ore zone, it is a mixture of sylvite and langbinite the land is very hard) with salt and keyserite(also very hard) ... sometime just starting a cut can wipe out 2-3 or more bits.( typical for a 12 hour shift is to use around 30 bits (spotting) the head on my machine has 64 bits. I usually cut up to back of the miner then back up as I start to get remote drop-outs if I go farther. My area is on retreat so in the longrooms we cut 3 passes wide and drive them 362' to the left and 452' to the right. Then we cut cross cuts to the right on the left side and to the left on the right side(2 passes wide and leave a 11.5' pillar) with a couple of dogholes(2 passes) wide to the right or left. The XC's usually go about 80' before breaking thru into the longrooms ahead(that we pulled). We pattern bolt with 3' bolt's with a 5-4 pattern 7' apart.. (5 across, go 7' 4 across etc)diesel bolters(fletchers) we have a 3' beam of salt above that pretty much hold's the back... we drill Air Holes every 125' in the longrooms 23' deep and when driving drill at every intersection...
We mine in a modified Chevron pattern. My panel has 2 Dbt( long-airdox) battery ramcars that were rated 20 tons in coal but hold about 15 tons of potash...And we are the only panel in the mine with a Stamler feeder. The other panels all have belt driven feeders that you dump on the side's... I will be getting an even bigger Joy machine in May that will weigh 20,000 more pounds and the head will be 13' wide...
Our Maximum depth is probably around 1750 and minimum probably around 900'

 

[herdfan]

I saw on CNN where there were many many violations at that mine and 4 times the average deaths there than the other mines.

I may get flamed for this, but the news is not reporting all the facts. ICG only fully took over this mine from its previous bankrupt owner in November. So most of the 2005 violations were under the previous owner. Of the 46 violations found in the latest inspection all but 3 had been corrected and those 3, which related to roof support, were in the process of being corrected.

The media reports things like "200+ violations" and the public goes nuts. The violation information is on the SAGO page of the MSHA website.

Disclaimer: I do not work for ICG or any other mining company. I am however in the energy industry and have been involved in incident investigations. What pi**ed me off was when we had our incident, the media reported that an out-of-service line had not been capped off as required. What they didn't report was that the line was taken out of service prior to the regulations requiring capping. So that is one of my pet peeves.

Living in WV, this does hit home. So thoughts and prayers to the families.

 

[dfergie]

The News media reports Citations... did not dig as if they were S&S or Non S&S... Many Citations are for very small things... Holes in Guards, door to a breaker box open etc...

 

[snaggerbob]

I think they reported that 96% were S&S violations. That's not good. Our mine had over 200 violations this past year but only 30% were S&S.

 

[herdfan]

I think they reported that 96% were S&S violations. That's not good. Our mine had over 200 violations this past year but only 30% were S&S.

No it was no where near that. IIRC it was 46 of 205 were S&S.

Don't know how much coverage this is still getting outside WV, but it has now been revealed that:

1) the miners could have walked out to safety on their own, and

2) the inital group of miners that attempted to rescue them (fellow miners not the federal team) came with a couple hundred yards of them and turned back due to smoke.

So what started as a very unfortunate incident became a tragedy because of slow response of the federal rescue teams.

 

[dfergie]

I heard that our Local Wipp Team went... ( a DOE waste site 2,000' deep) all they do is Mine Rescue... and in emergencys they have Amublance on call for wrecks nearby or for the local mines... About 4 years ago they responded to our mine and came to the scene of a vehicle accident underground, we had to cut the victum out of the vehicle with a torch thru 1/2' plate and use comealongs and portapowers also( lost brakes on an incline)... (I took our UG emergency vehicle to the scene and was there assisting until we got him out)