Massey Fined For Fatal Accident - Mine Safety Office doesn't put much value to human life!

The total fine for Massey Energy for contributing to a fatal mining accident is less than 45-hundred dollars.

[bill]

Thats the way it goes with Massey's Don. No respect for human life other than that of Daddy Don. Fatals are in the budget for Massey Coal. And MSHA don't seem to mind or does the West Viginia Dept. of Mines.

[Sleibhin]

Did you notice that not one , I have seen any, article addressed how cheap the fines were ? The paltry fines are No deterrent to the Companies to do anything other than " Run Coal and safety comes a distant second ". I'm sure certain peoples monthly company related entertainment bill far exceeds the cost of the fines .

[Williams Station Survivor]

If im not mistaken MSHA is made up of former mine operators and big shot company men.
MSHA directors arent worth the pissing on if they were on fire.

MSHA should be completely overhauled and its officials comprised of regular everyday miners who never had a salaried position in their lives. This is the only way to reform MSHA and turn it into an organization that is truly effective in combating problems and investigating mine safety issues.

[bill]

Williams Station, Sleibhin MSHA has made the hiring of regular miners almost impossible. There is a pre test that is given to all who apply for employment and are seclected for canditates to hire. This test is made of math and english among the subjects. Now this is the rub say a person has been out of school 10 or more years and don't use math or write reports on a reagular base and he take the test he don't have a chance to pass. Many quilified miners are passed over and there is a thing going to hire only eng. to perform inspection work. Most eng. will not do manual labor and want a desk job maybe going to work site only for a few hrs. now I anit against eng. just have worked with them for 35Plus years and know how they think. Inspection work is dirty and hard work if it is done right. now I think the testing should be done away with and hire the quilified mine and then send them to the National Mine Academy in Beckly WVA and train them as was done for years. the testing came into being when Ray Mckinny was the admin. for MSHA. he's an other story in its self. In 1977 the UMWA forced MSHA to hire so many union miners and for many years these guys for the most part did fine work. Now if you count the time most of these men are at retirement age or have become disabled. As for the most part MSHA is made of company men. Sorry but true.

[Sleibhin]

Whether they were "big shot" company men they are all biased towards the company philosophy .

As they are appointed by politicians you have to start at the beginning . For starters, perhaps a pledge could be drawn up where the changes needed for MSHA are outlined . Once prepared you obtain volunteers, in each coal mining state, to take said document to every politician running for office and have them sign stating they agree or disagree. No fence sitters . As documents are signed set up website , post signed documents and keep newspapers updated with the results .

I am sure there must be some legal people that would prepare said document with help of input from people who have been or are still woking in the industry .

I suggest coal mining as a starting place because it is the most dangerous . Once things get rolling you can add states with hard rock mining and industrial minerals .

If you want change you are going to have to work at making it happen .

[Williams Station Survivor]

Yes and most likely the presiding MSHA officials have a "good old boy" system put into place complete with copies of the tests and answers available for those they have personally chosen to recruit.

I personally know rock miners who claim they have never known MSHA or KDMM inspectors to show up until a fatal occurs. The main argument is that slope and shaft work falls under the category of construction and not mining. But then when a fatal occurs the state mine inspectors come rolling in with their "im going to get down to the bottom of this" attitudes. If it wasnt a mining site to begin with what the heck are these hot shot posers doing there after a fatal occurs?

[Sleibhin]

Bill : You are right . Recruit from inspectors from miners . Perhaps one would have to put a minimum of x tears of working as a miner . Then send , as you said, these people to the National Mine Academy . These Inspectors would have something not obtainable from any classroom lessons.

Also the schedule of Fines for Violations needs to be revised upwards so that the "accountants" of the mining companies will be screaming about the effect on the bottom line .

Still think you have to start with the politicians in order to get MSHA "cleansed" .

[Sleibhin]

Bill / William Station Survivor :

Bill you are right . Recruit from ranks of miners with a minimum of X years experience either underground or surface mines . Then send then, as you said, to National Mine Academy . They will be Inspectors with knowledge that you can't obtain in a classroom .

Also need to have schedule of fines revised upwards so that the accountants of the mining companies will be screaming at what they are doing to the bottom line of their financial statement .

Still think you have to start with the politicians in order to get the MSHA "cleansed" .

[engineer]

Hiring only miners would be largely a bad idea. I know a few VERY intelligent miners, but I know a lot that are not.

Someone above mentioned testing - if you can;t do math properly, how are you going to check math on powder counts, look at ground support data, and so on... If you can't write, 1/2 of all your citations will be voided.

MSHA can't find qualified inspectors for two reason - pay sucks, private sector with comparable skills = double the pay; bureaucracy, inspectors have told me NOT to join them as I do not enjoy stabbing my fellow workers in the back and brown nosing all day.

Engineers make the best inspectors, the old boys from the day are good inspectors too, but they are a different type of miner than today. Young miners today don't have the same work ethic, pride in the work, ability to follow law/company policies...

Try and guess what kind of engineer I am.

[Sleibhin]

engineer wrote : "If you can't write, 1/2 of all your citations will be voided."

Nowadays with Blackberrys , etc one doesn't need to be able to write - point and click .

A recruitment program with training should be bale to provide MSHA with competent Inspectors .

I have run across a few incompetent engineers in my day . One I vividly remember after standing on an open pit bench when it was blasted . The truck we were using ended up with several holes from fly rock . The so called engineers, in the office, thought it was frigging funny . No one was hurt or killed so Inspection agencies did nothing .

You, I would guess, are an engineer that thinks he is a cut above miners .

[Williams Station Survivor]

engineer from Denver commented...

"Hiring only miners would be largely a bad idea. I know a few VERY intelligent miners, but I know a lot that are not".

engineer from Denver also commented...

"Try and guess what kind of engineer I am."

Let me guess...you are a "professional engineer" who considers all other people who dont have a college degree to be simpletons. You are also one of those people who might "accidentally" get run over by a severely pissed off equipment operator who...ahem shall we say "didnt know he was there".

My question is are you a miner who is an engineer or a engineer who is a miner???
Might not sound like it but there is a big difference between the two.

[bill]

Mr Engineer I would say that you think your sh*t don't stink. Like I said math in mining comes down to figuring air reading pressure difference and what person can't count powder it on the stick or charge that is being used. The math that MSHA wants the miner to have is far above that needed to perform the inspections. The National Mine Academy can take a miner with high school edu. or some college and make a good inspector out of them. With some common sence these people are far far better than an engineer that has his head up his a** like most of them I know. I have many years service working wiht them and have at time completely reverised their plans. There are computer program Arps and Alps among a few that can be used by the average Joe to figure pillar mining and everone kowns that everone can't know it all and the smart one know where to go to get the information. We do need the PE engineer from time to time I guess not that often in practical coal mining. Can't keep them underground. Then look at the empoundment issues that the PE's did and the ones that failed. OH by the way I do have a degree, and the smart one I have found are the plain old coal or hard rock miners. God loves them all and so do I.

[Sleibhin]

Well Engineer it looks like, from sea to sea, you got failing marks on your question .

Seriously

•The MSHA needs to be "cleansed",

•Fines need to be revised upwards so they hurt,

•Inspectors - more field time than office

• Make use of Net, video , cell photos so actions, if needed, can be implemented in real time,

• Recruit more Inspectors from Miners as well as Engineers,

. Program of education for both Miners and Mining Company management "Mine Safety before Run Coal"

. Go after the politicians so the necessary funding is put in place to carry out the above .

That's how I see it from the side of the Sierra Madres - still watching out for HB .

[engineer]

Sleibhin-
I agree 100% with the last post. MSHA does need a "cleansing", inspectors need more time in the field, and you should recruit both miners and engineers.

Just recruiting miners would be a bad idea, just recruiting engineers would be a bad idea. Pick the best of both pools.

For the miners that got their feelers hurt above: buck up, stop bitching.

I am not a PE. A test and a piece of paper don't mean shit to me. I've run across many more incompetent engineers in my day than most of you, I work around these morons everyday.

But I've got enough experience to know some miners can also be idiots, that won't follow safety procedures if it costs them bonus to save their lives (unfortunately, literally sometimes). If you deny this, you are/were one of them.

I also see a huge gap between older miners and young miners. Young miners lack work ethics, pride in the work they do; it's all about the money for young miners. If you can't see this in many (but not all), you aren’t paying enough attention.

Williams Station Survivor- Nice way to insinuate it is a good thing to KILL an engineer. Event though that should be enough to tell me what type of person you are, I will answer the question.

I am a miner, who is an engineer. I spent a good chunk of the beginning of my career working a heading at a small mine, under a old boy miner who knew what he was doing and actually gave a crap about it. I respect good miners more than engineers, we took the easy way out; but I have no respect for piss poor pig miners that break equipment, blow shit up, and don't care about the safety of those around them more than a paycheck. I supsect you are the latter, but I may be wrong.

[Sleibhin]

Ok fellows : Time out . Engineer from your initial posting you came across as a different person . You asked the question . So lets call it quits with personal insults .

As I wrote I had a mine engineer try to kill me and others on a mine tour . On another occasion I was in a parked truck that was almost flattened by an Euclid. Actually I wasn't in the truck as I left when I lost confidence in the driver's belief that the driver of the Euclid could see us . The probable death of occupants in truck was averted by a safety person who saw what was going to happen .

I might be wrong but I have a hunch that drugs is a bigger problem in underground coal mines . Bill, correct me if I am wrong, I think that until "RUN COAL is second to MINERS' SAFETY " there will always be accidents and deaths . I believe that nothing will change until the miners are educated along with mine management .

So fellows lets keep to the subject .

Thanks all

Sleibhin

[engineer]

Alright, I'll try to cool it a little. But a "wink-wink" insinuation of "accidentally" killing an engineer is a comment that should be judged with the little red x, and is a lot more inflamitory that anything I initially said.

My bottom line - Both operators and miners SHARE in ensuring that any given workplace is safe. Operators need to train miners, miners need to take that training and actually use it.

I would agree that miners safety should always be first priority to production. Never should safety be sacrificed to production. However, with crazy high bonus systems, this will most likely never happen. Many, not all, but many will choose the money (production) over safety. I've seen it time and again.

While we are on the bashing stories, I feel like I need to share a few. In the variety of jobs I have held, I have personally seen miners:
- Taking drugs on the job, underground.
- Pull up grizzlies on the top of chutes with 50+ vertical foot drops because they can push more material thru faster. They were reprimanded, did the same thing twice again and were terminated
- Leave an oil dipstick across battery terminals melting the battery casing, and then lighting it on fire.
- Short wick a safety fuse, and blast with no warning or guarding, very nearly killing myself and another miner.
- Slush an entire GD 83 drill thru two grizzlies, found in jaw crusher.
- Not use provided safety equipment -respirators, fall protection... because it was uncomfortable, or time consuming.
The list could continue, but that is probably enough.

The division between management and miners needs to end. We (management) are not here to make as much money as possible, regardless of safety. In fact, we need every miner we can get, healthy and alive, because there aren't many good miners left. Even more so, I pay all but 2 of my newest miners more than me; I know what they do and how they earn/deserve that money.

Miners need to realize that they share in this. Management needs to reach out and treat miners better.

We may be talking about two different things here too - large disasters, such as with Massey, where management was the at fault party, and everyday "small disasters" where one miner is killed, and usually at least partly shares the blame.

Disclaimer - never worked coal, metal/non-metal only. The coal world may be a different place than where I have worked.

[engineer]

And although I see the easy misunderstanding of the question, I meant mining engineer. This topix board (well the whole topix board) is filled with engineers, I wanted to specify mining, not some civil a-hole that thinks mining is so easy he can do it with no education. Should have just come out and said it.

But Williams Station Survivor can take that "accidentally" killing an engineer line and shove it. That's disgusting and shows his true colors; I'd put that stupid red x on it but I'm not a prick.

[Sleibhin]

Engineer : I can think of a couple of engineers that would be good candidates for a flattening out event . They were the ones, in the office, who laughed when we reported the bench blasting event with us on the bench. It happened so fast that no one had a chance to be scared until after the event . That night we checked into hotel with gambling casinos . I didn't try the tables as I figured I had used up my luck for that day .

I would say that in no way can one compare coal mines and hard rock mines . The environment in a underground coal mine is just waiting to kill or maim a miner that makes a mistake .

Note taken of killing an engineer . I'd say the comment was because he is from a very different world : A place called " Run Coal - forget Miners' Safety". Sure there are other factors but the main one is RC>MS.

You have a good one now Engineer .

[engineer]

"They were the ones, in the office, who laughed when we reported the bench blasting event with us on the bench."
Yeah, I think I would have took them off mine property and beat the ____ out of 'em, if it was me. I think I would have gone to one of those casinos though...

"I would say that in no way can one compare coal mines and hard rock mines . The environment in a underground coal mine is just waiting to kill or maim a miner that makes a mistake."

As I said before, I never worked in coal mines. It is sad to hear that, it really is.

The environment is much different- the little I know, you have gasses, and roof conditions that are much different, big heavy equipment (I work small mines, I like jacklegs and rail myself), and usually (am I right about this) less escapeways portals than we do. My current mine has 3 exits, one refuge chamber, barricade material at every heading, and can be walked out of in less than 10 minutes. I don't want to diminish my dangers - we work vertically, deal with occasionally funky ground and faults, no gas, but a lot of quick moving air powered equipment.

Is management in coal mining as different from M/NM as the general environment is? Is there a push for production above safety, how much so? Or does a bonus system have something to do with it too? Do miners take safety seriously, but are hampered by the efforts of management?

I don't know, I am seriously asking. I've never been east of Mississippi; I live in the mountains and don't leave 'em. There's not a lot of coal mines in these mountains.

On a side note - you know what really pisses me off - those sand and gravel plants. They kill a lot of people each year, and don't have that big of a work force.

[engineer]

I don't know why Broomfield and Liberal, KS show up; I am no where near there. I am on sattelite, so I bet that's it, but I am the same engineer.

And I guess Twenty-Mile Coal is relatively nearby, but that's not really in the mountains or close to where I live.