by Mike Hall, Apr 28, 2006

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts examine the coal miner photo exhibit.

“The first thing we did was activate our [oxygen] rescuers, as we had been trained. At least four of the rescuers did not function. I shared my rescuer with Jerry Groves, while Junior Toler, Jesse Jones and Tom Anderson sought help from others. There were not enough rescuers to go around.”

That’s how Randall McCloy, the lone survivor of the Jan. 2 explosion at the International Coal Group’s Sago mine, described the first few minutes after the methane blast ripped through the West Virginia mine. McCloy’s words are part of a letter he wrote to the survivors of the 12 miners who died. The Associated Press obtained the letter and reported it April 27.

“It was a lack of oxygen and lack of communication that killed those miners,” Mine Workers (UMWA) President Cecil Roberts told more than 75 people at a special mine safety forum at AFL-CIO headquarters the day before McCloy’s letter was made public. Near Roberts were large black and white photos of the dozen Sago miners who died that day, with candles in front of them.

The forum was part of Workers Memorial Day activities and also highlighted a powerful new photo exhibit “Our Future in Retrospect—Coal Miner Health in Appalachia” by photo-journalist Earl Dotter. The exhibit is dedicated to the 26 miners killed this year and will be on display at the AFL-CIO headquarters through May 1.

Roberts told the crowd that one of the first acts by the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), after George W. Bush was elected president and put his stamp on the safety agency in 2001, was to withdraw 17 mine safety and health rules, including stronger oxygen self-rescuer rules.

Despite heroic efforts to get out of the Sago Mine, the smoke and the fumes kept the miners trapped. They made desperate attempts to communicate with hoped-for rescuers by beating on mine bolts and plates, hoping the reverberation would be heard, sapped their strength, McCloy wrote.

They sat together behind a canvas sheet that couldn’t keep the deadly fumes from eventually filling their small chamber:

Some drifted off into what appeared to be a deep sleep, and one person sitting near me collapsed and fell off his bucket, not moving. It was clear that there was nothing I could do to help him. The last person I remember speaking to was Jackie Weaver, who reassured me that if it was our time to go, then God’s will would be fulfilled.

So far this year, the nation’s coal mines are killing miners far more often than in 2006. Twenty-six miners have lost their lives on the job as of April 27, compared with 22 in all of 2005.

Roberts pointed to three key reasons why mine deaths are climbing: a huge increase in demand for coal as oil prices soar; the huge profits and rising stock prices of coal and energy companies that’s putting production over safety; and the Bush administration’s appointment of coal industry insiders and executives to police coal mine safety.

“It makes zero sense, the industry is policing itself. They [MSHA] are helping coal companies mine coal, rather than helping miners stay alive. We need a government that cares what happens to people,” Roberts said.

Roberts acknowledged that coal mining is a dangerous business, “every time a coal miner goes into a mine, he could get killed.” But not only has the Bush administration withdrawn the stronger safety rules in the pipeline when it took office, it’s issued new ones “that make things worse.”

For example, MSHA moved to allow what is called “belt air” to be used to ventilate a mine, instead of a separate ventilation path. Air that runs along the conveyer belt that carries coal from a working section of a mine means that a fire along the belt could send smoke, flames and fumes into occupied areas of the mine. Most mine safety experts believe that is dangerous.

The UMWA took MSHA to court over the belt air exemption, but a federal judge ruled in favor of the agency in 2004.

Roberts said most front-line inspectors want to enforce mine safety laws and protect miners, but with the change in MSHA management, its ties to the industry and emphasis on voluntary cooperation instead of strict enforcement, their job has become increasingly difficult to do.

Responding to a question from the audience, Roberts talked about the training new UMWA miners receive. After receiving above-ground classroom training when a new miner goes underground in a union mine, “they’re basically mentored, matched up with a veteran miner, but everyone watches out for them. They are not allowed to go out of sight, can’t operate certain equipment. I don’t know if they pay particular attention to that in a nonunion mine,” he said.

All coal mining families, union and nonunion, share the fear of possible death on the job and the grief when their loved ones are killed, Roberts said.

“The one thing they all say is, ‘We don’t ever want anybody to have to go through what we did.’ These families deserve better than they are getting,” he said.

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