FAIRMONT — While it was hard to watch Patriot Coal Corp.’s Federal No. 2 Mine halt production a few times over the past month, we have to believe that swift action on the part of mine, union and federal officials may have saved lives.
Stopping mining at the operation means placing a financial burden on the miners who work there, we understand, but conditions were such that an explosion like the one that took the lives of 12 miners just four years ago in Sago was possible. A build-up of methane gas was high enough to justify a halt to production on Feb. 18 and again the following week.
After ventilation plans were approved by federal officials, the mine opened to operation early last week as conditions were again acceptable for the safety of the workers at Federal No. 2.
What is upsetting is that this situation could have been prevented.
The West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training office received a complaint in late January about safety inspection reports that had been falsified. As a result, the state inspector started an investigation and learned that a foreman admitted to making inaccurate entries in the mine records. The foreman was fired and his certification was to be suspended and ultimately revoked. The U.S. Department of Labor’s Mine Safety & Health Administration then started investigating.
Late last week, the foreman, 40-year-old John Renner of Monongalia County, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Clarksburg. He has been charged with making a false certification on an MSHA document that he had examined the No. 27 block seal on Jan. 24.
He is free on bond while awaiting his sentencing. The maximum penalty is five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
We know this is not the end of the investigation. But we know that Federal No. 2 is now a safer place to work than it was in January and February.
And we know that the employees of the mine owe a lot to those who made complaints to the state mining office. You’ll find that mines where unions are present, like the United Mine Workers of America is at Federal No. 2, employees seem to have more confidence to report dangerous practices and risky behavior.
“We will not tolerate any type of shenanigans that will provide any type of unsafe environment for us,” Mike Caputo, District 31 international vice president of the UMWA, told the Times West Virginian.
This community is not immune to the tragedy that comes with unsafe mine conditions. In fact, the explosion at the Farmington No. 9 Mine nearly 42 years ago brought on industry-sweeping changes that were enforced by the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act, which actually created MSHA.
We are so very fortunate that another mine disaster did not impact this community as it did in 1907 and in 1968.
“The deliberate attempt to falsify records required to be maintained under the Mine Act endangers, undermines MSHA’s enforcement responsibility, and will be addressed by all available means,” MSHA Assistant Secretary Joseph A. Main said last week.
When this investigation closes, we hope the message that laziness, carelessness or cutting corners when it comes to safety measures is unacceptable. Those measures were put in place to honor the men who have lost their lives mining so that their deaths would not be in vain.
