The West Virginia Legislature's speedy passage of mine-safety reforms last week is prompting mining agencies and companies in Pennsylvania and elsewhere to consider similar measures.

Public and private mining officials are studying the package passed Monday and signed Thursday by Gov. Joe Manchin III with an eye toward drafting or amending their own mine-safety standards. West Virginia's Senate and House of Delegates approved the measures in one day, spurred by the deaths of 12 miners after an explosion Jan. 2 at the Sago mine in Tallmansville and two more in a fire Jan. 19 at the Aracoma Alma No. 1 mine in Melville.

The new law requires mines to stockpile and mark emergency oxygen supplies, to attach them to "lifeline" cords from work areas to the surface, and to install systems to track and communicate with miners.

It also requires mine companies to notify authorities of serious incidents within 15 minutes and sets penalties for failure to comply.

Left unclear is how much the changes will cost. Communications systems could run from $100,000 to several hundred thousand dollars, depending on mine sizes, officials said. Individual, self-contained, self-rescuer canisters, containing about an hour's worth of oxygen, cost about $600.

Pennsylvania Sen. Richard Kasunic, D-Dunbar, said he was drafting legislation which would require lifeline cords and oxygen stockpiles marked with reflective devices and battery-powered lights.

Mr. Kasunic said he favored equipping miners with tracking devices and equipping mines with caches of material throughout for miners to use to build barricades if they cannot escape after an accident. He said he was not sure whether he would draft a separate bill or try to amend legislation that he sponsored last fall.

In October, Mr. Kasunic and state Rep. Bob Bastian, R-Somerset, introduced mine safety bills aimed at overhauling the state's Bituminous Coal Mine Act for the first time since 1961.

That legislation, which incorporates recommendations made by investigators after nine miners were trapped in the Quecreek Mine in Somerset County in 2002, is scheduled for a hearing Tuesday before the Senate Committee on Environmental Resources and Energy.

It would increase the ability of the state Department of Environmental Protection to adopt safety regulations and deny or revoke mining permits of companies that fail to adhere to them. Under current law, the department cannot adopt regulations but must wait for a law to be passed.

Also last week, state Rep. Dan Surra, D-Elk, said he would introduce legislation to require all deep mines to install systems which would enable them to find workers underground and to place oxygen stations in mines.

Pennsylvania law already requires mine companies to notify state officials immediately of serious incidents, said Tom Rathbun, spokesman for the Department of Environmental Protection. It also requires mines to install two-way telephone or wire-based communication systems underground, but does not require individual tracking or communication devices, he said.

DEP mine-safety officials plan to meet this week with a salesman to discuss a type of one-way, low-frequency personal emergency device which sends text messages to miners, Mr. Rathbun said. Those systems, which are used in some U.S. mines as well as overseas, operate by sending a signal which causes a miner's cap lamp to flash, alerting the miner to check a message sent to a pager-like device on his belt.

The department does not require mines to install emergency stockpiles of oxygen canisters, but is reviewing that possibility, Mr. Rathbun said.

"We need to find out if there are safety issues involved and find the best way to go about it," he said, noting that oxygen has to be stored properly to prevent exacerbating a mine fire.

Officials in Ohio, Utah and Kentucky also were reviewing the West Virginia legislation. On Thursday, an Alabama circuit judge ordered regulators to reinspect some underground and surface mines and to study the use of communication and tracking devices and emergency oxygen supplies for underground miners.

Officials at Massey Energy Co., which owns the Alma No. 1 mine, did not return phone calls concerning whether they would implement provisions of West Virginia's new law at its mines in other states. Charles Snavely, vice president of Sago mine owner International Coal Group Inc., said in a statement that ICG used text pagers in its operations in Illinois and "intends to implement improved technology at all of its mines."

Consol Energy, which includes eight underground mines in southwestern Pennsylvania and northern West Virginia in its operations, has its own emergency response system in place and caches oxygen supplies in its mines, spokesman Thomas Hoffman said.

The Rosebud Mining Co., which has several mines northeast of Pittsburgh, also will install oxygen stockpiles in the wake of the deaths at Sago and Alma No. 1, President Cliff Forest said.

Consol has tried some communication and tracking devices in its mines, with mixed results, Mr. Hoffman said.

Miners in its Blacksville 2 mine, which has its entrance in Greene County but runs under West Virginia, use personal electronic devices. But the company has not had success with the devices in other mines, he said.

Participants at a hearing last week before a U.S. Senate subcommittee on the West Virginia mine incidents displayed a text message system used by miners and a transponder which gives their position underground.

But Mr. Hoffman and other mining officials said current technology couldn't ensure that communication and tracking systems would function in all mines of varying size, depth, geologic conditions and humidity.

They said existing communications systems in some U.S. mines relied on wires and antennas, which are vulnerable to damage or loss of power during fires, explosions and cave-ins. Two-way walkie-talkie systems which don't rely on wires won't penetrate the earth in deep mines.

Phil Smith, a spokesman for the United Mine Workers of America, said the union believed the text message systems were effective but that he knew of no U.S. mine using a tracking system.

Nor does Scott Shearer, president of CSE Corp., of Monroeville, a firm which manufactures self-contained self-rescuer and gas detection equipment for mines and distributes personal emergency devices made by Mine Site Technologies of Sydney, Australia.

"The real issue is that we need more work in the technology area," Mr. Hoffman said. "If government's interest can help to create an incentive for new technology, that could be very helpful."