CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A federal judge has thrown out two of five citations that alleged International Coal Group did not have required lightning protections on electrical equipment at the Sago Mine prior to the January 2006 disaster that killed 12 miners.
Click here to read the judge's ruling.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A federal judge has thrown out two of five citations that alleged International Coal Group did not have required lightning protections on electrical equipment at the Sago Mine prior to the January 2006 disaster that killed 12 miners.
The ruling, by an appeals commission administrative law judge, also weakened a third citation and reduced penalties issued by the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration for the lightning protection violations at Sago from just under $4,000 to about $1,000.
Judge Jerold Feldman of the federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission ruled against MSHA in an appeal of the lightning citations brought by lawyers for ICG subsidiary Wolf Run Mining, which operated the Upshur County mine.
Federal and state investigators blamed the deadly explosion on a lightning strike, but MSHA concluded the violations did not contribute to the disaster.
The five lightning protection citations were among 149 non-contributing violations MSHA issued to Sago following an investigation of the disaster.
ICG appealed at least 36 of those citations, including the five lightning violations. As part of his ruling, Feldman approved a settlement concerning the 31 other citations. Under that deal, ICG agreed to pay $25,000 of the $28,000 in fines originally proposed by MSHA.
"In his decision, the administrative law judge appropriately vacated or reduced a number of the citations," said Ira Gamm, a spokesman for Scott Depot-based ICG.
"We are appealing the adverse portions of the decision," Gamm said in a prepared statement. "The key point to remember is that none of these citations were determined to have contributed to the Sago accident."
On Friday, MSHA did not respond to requests for comment on the ruling.
When the explosion occurred early on the morning of Jan. 2, 2006, one team of miners escaped but another crew of 13 became trapped deep underground. One of them, fireboss Terry Helms, died shortly after the explosion from carbon monoxide poisoning.
Twelve other miners became trapped underground and decided to wait for rescuers behind a makeshift barricade when several of them could not get their emergency breathing devices to work properly. Eleven of them died before rescuers could reach them more than 40 hours later. Only one, Randal McCloy Jr., survived.
As the nation watched on television, a false report led families gathered in a nearby church to believe that all 12 had survived. They learned of the tragic miscommunication three hours later, fueling even more anger at ICG.
Sago was the worst coal-mining disaster in West Virginia in nearly 40 years, since 78 miners died at Farmington on Nov. 20, 1968.
MSHA investigators found a variety of serious safety problems at Sago, including ignored electrical problems, poor training practices, and unsafe equipment.
Click here to read the judge's ruling.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A federal judge has thrown out two of five citations that alleged International Coal Group did not have required lightning protections on electrical equipment at the Sago Mine prior to the January 2006 disaster that killed 12 miners.
The ruling, by an appeals commission administrative law judge, also weakened a third citation and reduced penalties issued by the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration for the lightning protection violations at Sago from just under $4,000 to about $1,000.
Judge Jerold Feldman of the federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission ruled against MSHA in an appeal of the lightning citations brought by lawyers for ICG subsidiary Wolf Run Mining, which operated the Upshur County mine.
Federal and state investigators blamed the deadly explosion on a lightning strike, but MSHA concluded the violations did not contribute to the disaster.
The five lightning protection citations were among 149 non-contributing violations MSHA issued to Sago following an investigation of the disaster.
ICG appealed at least 36 of those citations, including the five lightning violations. As part of his ruling, Feldman approved a settlement concerning the 31 other citations. Under that deal, ICG agreed to pay $25,000 of the $28,000 in fines originally proposed by MSHA.
"In his decision, the administrative law judge appropriately vacated or reduced a number of the citations," said Ira Gamm, a spokesman for Scott Depot-based ICG.
"We are appealing the adverse portions of the decision," Gamm said in a prepared statement. "The key point to remember is that none of these citations were determined to have contributed to the Sago accident."
On Friday, MSHA did not respond to requests for comment on the ruling.
When the explosion occurred early on the morning of Jan. 2, 2006, one team of miners escaped but another crew of 13 became trapped deep underground. One of them, fireboss Terry Helms, died shortly after the explosion from carbon monoxide poisoning.
Twelve other miners became trapped underground and decided to wait for rescuers behind a makeshift barricade when several of them could not get their emergency breathing devices to work properly. Eleven of them died before rescuers could reach them more than 40 hours later. Only one, Randal McCloy Jr., survived.
As the nation watched on television, a false report led families gathered in a nearby church to believe that all 12 had survived. They learned of the tragic miscommunication three hours later, fueling even more anger at ICG.
Sago was the worst coal-mining disaster in West Virginia in nearly 40 years, since 78 miners died at Farmington on Nov. 20, 1968.
MSHA investigators found a variety of serious safety problems at Sago, including ignored electrical problems, poor training practices, and unsafe equipment.
Federal officials also concluded that stronger seals, proper methane monitoring, and the removal of a pump cable from a sealed area of the mine could have prevented the disaster. But MSHA did not cite ICG or its Wolf Run subsidiary for any violations that contributed to the explosion or the deaths.
In a May 2007 report, MSHA pointed to a lightning strike as the "most likely" ignition source for the explosion that ripped through a sealed area of the Sago Mine. State and federal investigators had focused on that explanation early on, and ICG issued press statements and its own reports promoting that conclusion.
MSHA investigators said they believed one of two types of lightning strikes led to the explosion: Either a horizontal bolt that split off a strike recorded at about the 6:30 a.m. time of the blast, or another strike that went unrecorded by various lightning detection systems.
Based on a report by the Sandia National Laboratory, MSHA officials then concluded the lightning created an electromagnetic field, similar to the field created by the north and south poles of a magnet. This phenomenon, the Sandia report said, could create enough energy to induce a voltage onto a pump cable that ICG had left in the sealed area of the mine. In turn, this voltage, the theory goes, would cause an arc or spark that ignited methane built up inside the sealed area.
Under federal rules, power lines and phone cables that lead into underground mines must generally be equipped with lightning arresters. These are protective devices that limit surges of electricity from lightning strikes or equipment failures. They prevent damage to electrical equipment and, in the case of underground coal mines, help to prevent lightning from sparking fires or explosions.
During an early interview with investigators, Sago maintenance foreman and chief electrician Denver Wilfong told state and federal officials that Sago did not have lightning arresters on parts of its carbon monoxide monitoring system or on a "trolley line" or power cable that Sago used for its phone system.
Later, MSHA inspectors issued five citations, alleging Sago wrongly did not have lightning arresters on battery charging cables, high-voltage overhead lines, a water pump cable (though not the one left in the sealed area), and its telephone and trolley wires.
In his ruling, Feldman pointed out that the MSHA regulations require lightning arresters only on each "ungrounded, exposed" power conductor and telephone wire.
Feldman threw out the two citations concerning the battery charger cables. Because the cables were grounded through a neutral ground medium on the frame of the underground conveyor, they were exempt from the MSHA regulation requiring lightning arresters, the judge ruled. The judge also ruled that the trolley wire MSHA cited did not require a lightning arrester because it did not extend to an underground area of the mine.
The judge's ruling reduced the total fines for the remaining lighting arrester citations from $3,939 to $1,083.
Feldman noted that Sago "heightened MSHA's awareness with regard to the hazards associated with lightning strikes."
But government records show a series of lightning-induced mine explosions in the United States and abroad over the last 30 years did not prompt any additional safety rules.
After Sago, the United Mine Workers union advocated a new rule to require the evacuation of underground mines during lightning storms. Last week, President Obama appointed former UMW safety director Joe Main to run MSHA.
Main has already begun working as a consultant to Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, but has not announced his agenda for the agency. No schedule has been set for a confirmation hearing or vote.
Reach Ken Ward Jr. at kw...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-1702.
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