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UMW president calls it 'incomplete'

Saturday, November 09, 2002

By Don Hopey, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

The preliminary state report on what caused the Quecreek Mine accident in July and who is to blame is "woefully incomplete," according to United Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts, and it raises more questions than it answers about conditions in the mine and state permitting procedures.

Released Thursday by the state Department of Environmental Protection, the report pins the blame on old, inaccurate mine maps, a dead mine inspector and a dead mine supervisor, but Roberts called on state and federal investigators to unearth the full story so such an accident won't happen again.

"The DEP and the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration must turn over every rock to try and ensure this kind of accident never happens again," Roberts said in a statement released yesterday. "I fear if that doesn't happen, the next time there's an accident like this the outcome may not lead to a Disney movie."

DEP Secretary David Hess defended the report, saying its account of the accident, findings and recommendations are based on interviews with the miners and mine officials done by his agency and the Mine Safety and Health Administration.

"We reported the results of our official investigation and the interviews we did. That's what we relied on," Hess said. "If others have additional information, they need to get it to us."

The report on the accident that trapped nine miners for 78 hours when their Quecreek Mine was inadvertently inundated by a flood of water from the adjacent, abandoned Saxman Mine, will not be final for 30 days.

The UMW criticisms of the preliminary DEP accident report mirror concerns raised by Howard Messer, a Pittsburgh attorney representing seven of the nine trapped Quecreek miners.

The old maps used by the miners showed the Saxman Mine was 300 feet away from the Quecreek mining operation. But Roberts said the report ignores testimony by miners at Senate subcommittee hearings in Somerset last month that they told Black Wolf Coal Co. supervisors they were concerned about the amount of water they were working in, that the mine roof was "soft" and there was an abnormal amount of water pouring in around roof bolts.

"There were signs the miners were getting close to something abnormal," said Joe Main, UMW administrator for health and safety. "The problem they were encountering with the mine roof was extremely significant. I can't believe this wasn't a warning sign."

But Hess said the miners, in interviews done in the days immediately after the accident and rescue, never described the wet conditions of the mine as unusual or cause for concern.

Main said the DEP's report raises as many questions about the state's mine permitting process as it does about what the company knew and when it knew it.

He said the DEP permit office should have provided additional protections for the Quecreek miners because of questions raised about the accuracy of coal mining maps.

The report said Black Wolf Mining Co., the Quecreek mine operator, relied on an undated map showing Saxman Mine workings as they were prior to 1961, and the DEP approved the mining permit without checking coal production records that show coal was dug out of the Saxman Mine through 1963.

"If the DEP permit people didn't match up the maps and the production records, they should have," Main said. "This was a situation where the maps were questionable and the mining history of the area was obscure. In those situations, the state needs to take a harder look."

Hess said that one of the report's 17 recommendations would require the DEP to check coal production records against existing mine maps, but said that's not a foolproof way to prevent future accidents.

"If you look at the coal production records for Saxman from 1961 through 1963, you can fit all of that into the void on the 1961 map that was used," he said. "So production can raise a flag -- that's why we made the recommendation -- but it's not precise enough to indicate more mining was done and eliminate all uncertainty."

Quecreek is a nonunion mine, and its miners are not UMW members, but Main said the union is interested in making sure the investigations into the accident are complete because future mining safety regulations and policy could be based on the investigation reports.

"We had an accident and it affected a lot of people, a lot of miners," he said. "Union or nonunion doesn't matter. The public, the miners, their families, our members, have a right and a need to know just what happened and why."