Mine owner "reckless" before 2010 blast: Report

BECKLEY, W.Va. — Massey Energy Co. recklessly ignored safety and allowed dangerous conditions to build inside a West Virginia mine until a blast last year killed 29 men in the deadliest U.S. coal accident since 1970, according to an independent report released Thursday.

The report by a former top federal mine regulator, commissioned by the state's then-governor, said Massey could have prevented the April, 5, 2010, disaster with standard safety practices, including better ventilation to reduce potentially explosive levels of gas and dust in the tunnels.

"A company that was a towering presence in the Appalachian coalfields operated its mines in a profoundly reckless manner, and 29 coal miners paid with their lives for the corporate risk-taking," the study concluded.

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It also cast blame on state and federal regulators for failing to adequately enforce safety laws at the sprawling Upper Big Branch mine.

The report was released to members of the victims' families during a private briefing. Several told The Associated Press that its findings did not surprise them because they knew the mine wasn't safe.

"They knew the men were entering a dangerous mine, that this could have happened at any time, and they still continued to put the men at risk," said Clay Mullins, whose brother Rex died in the explosion.

Gary Quarles, father of miner Gary Wayne Quarles, said the report confirmed what he believed — that his son and his crewmates saw something about to go wrong and tried to flee. Their bodies were found in a place they shouldn't have been.

"Massey is just above the law. They don't want to listen to nobody. They want to do it their way," Quarles said.

The study noted that the explosion could have been prevented "had Massey Energy followed basic, well-tested and historically proven safety procedures."

It also supported the federal government's theory that methane gas mixed with huge volumes of explosive coal dust turned a small fireball into an earth-shattering explosion

Massey disputed the report, saying the explosion was sparked by an uncontrollable inundation of natural gas deep inside the mine.

"Our experts feel confident that coal dust did not play an important role," Shane Harvey, Massey's general counsel said in a statement. "Our experts continue to study the explosion and our goal is to find answers and technologies that ultimately make mining safer."

Virginia-based Massey is in the process of being acquired by Alpha Natural Resources. An Alpha spokesman said the company plans to retrain Massey employees and add 270 safety positions when it takes over Massey's operations June 1.

The report is the first of several that are expected. State and federal investigators are pursuing their own investigations, while federal prosecutors conduct a criminal investigation.

Roosevelt Lynch left the family briefing early with tears in his eyes. His father, William Roosevelt Lynch, died in the explosion. Lynch said he wanted time to digest the report, but thought investigators "did a pretty good job. I'm satisfied."

"I'm a coal miner," he said. "I know what goes on."

The 113-page report was compiled by a team led by former federal Mine Safety and Health Administration chief J. Davitt McAteer, who was appointed by then-Gov. Joe Manchin to examine the explosion.

McAteer's report has 11 findings and 52 recommendations, ranging from better monitoring of underground conditions to subjecting companies' boards of directors to penalties if they fail to make safety a priority.

Federal officials praised the findings as vindication, but the report said MSHA and the West Virginia Office of Miners' Health Safety and Training did not properly police the mine.

"The disaster at the Upper Big Branch mine is proof positive that the agency failed its duty as the watchdog for coal miners," the report said of MSHA.

MSHA director Joe Main said his agency did its job, and at some point mining companies need to be responsible for their operations.

MSHA inspectors issued more closure orders at Upper Big Branch than any of the more than 14,000 mines the agency oversees. The orders shut down operations on a section until a safety violation is fixed.

During a media briefing, McAteer said so many things were wrong at Upper Big Branch that the report defied a simple summary. But the company's reckless disregard for safety is illustrated in the critical lack of rock dusting equipment, stockpiles and people to apply it.

He said Congress and the entire mining industry "must step forward and change the way business is being done."

The report offers disturbing details about the mine.

Upper Big Branch was a place where foremen improvised on a regular basis to give their crews enough fresh air, where anyone who dared challenge authority was threatened with firing, and where the only thing that mattered was made crystal-clear in a single practice — calls to the surface with production reports every 30 minutes for company executives.

Air also routinely flowed in the wrong direction, if at all. Men were regularly forced to wade through chest-deep water, and the safety inspector who was supposed to file pre-shift reports on air and methane readings did so for weeks before the blast without even turning on his gas detector.

There was so little fresh air flowing to clear away methane, coal dust and other dangerous gases that the normally chilly underground environment grew hot enough to make men sweat. The mine was, the report concluded, a place where the crew could do nothing to save itself when the inevitable happened.

"Everything just went black. It was like sitting in the middle of a hurricane, things flying, hitting you," Tim Blake, one of two survivors, told investigators.

The other, James Woods, was so severely injured he may never be able to talk about what he endured.

Blake, meanwhile, struggled in the darkness to save his crewmates, pulling Woods and seven other men from a shuttle car and putting emergency air packs on all but one, whose device was missing.

"They all had pulse," he said.

Blake checked them a few minutes later.

"Everybody had a pulse but one man."

Then he decided to leave them — "the hardest thing I ever done" — to get help.

The report reveals that 19 of the miners died of carbon monoxide poisoning, although several also suffered traumatic injuries in the blast.

Although the blast has been widely viewed as a single event, the report says it was actually a chain reaction that lasted from one to three minutes, starting at 3:01 p.m. As coal dust become airborne, it provided more fuel, allowing the blast to continue propagating "like a line of gunpowder," forward in multiple directions, "obliterating everything in its path."

In January, the MSHA said it suspected the blast began with a spark from the cutting head of a mining machine, which had poorly maintained and plugged water sprayers that failed to douse the flames.

McAteer's investigators agreed.

The investigators also concluded the mine's ventilation system had been compromised, in part by flooding in tunnels leading to a fan positioned to suck air through the mine, but also by leaky airlock doors that had been propped open and other missing air controls.

Upper Big Branch was cited 64 times for ventilation violations in 2009.

Massey has spent moths blaming the federal government for the blast, claiming that changes MSHA ordered to its ventilation plan only contributed to the problems.

The independent investigators found no evidence to support those claims.

Nor did they find any records showing Massey complained to MSHA.

The mine about 50 miles south of Charleston hasn't operated since the explosion. Massey has proposed sealing the mine, but details still need to be worked out with MSHA.