Delorice Bragg is the widow of WV coal miner Don Bragg. Freda Hatfield is the widow of Ellery Hatfield. Both men died in a 2006 fire in Massey Energy Co.'s Aracoma Alma No. 1 mine in Melville, Logan County, WV.
Don Bragg
Ellery Hatfield
(photos courtesy The Charleston Gazette)
Today the two widows filed suit in U.S. District Court in Charleston against the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration for that agency’s failure to take action to prevent the fire that killed their husbands.
Follow me below the fold for more information.
I feel it important to begin here, with the the accident that took the lives of these two coal miners.
The following snippets are work of the U.S. Government (U.S. Department of Labor, Mine Safety and Health Administration) and are not subject to copyright protection. The 118 page document can be read in its entirely HERE
At approximately 5:14 p.m. on January 19, 2006, a fire occurred at the 9 Headgate longwall belt takeup storage unit of the Aracoma Alma Mine #1, resulting in the deaths of two miners. Twenty-nine underground miners were working on this shift. Initial attempts to extinguish the fire failed, and observations at the scene indicated that smoke from the fire was traveling further into the mine via the 2 Section intake air course. Miners in affected areas were neither immediately notified nor withdrawn following the initial carbon monoxide (CO) alarm signal from the Atmospheric Monitoring System (AMS).
After the 2 Section foreman was informed that smoke from the fire was traveling toward the section in the intake air course, he assembled the other 11 miners working on the section and began an evacuation. The foreman told the miners if they encountered smoke and were unable to travel all the way out the roadway, they would move into the adjacent North East Mains (NEM) belt entry through a personnel door.
The 2 Section crew boarded a rubber-tired diesel mantrip and began traveling out the roadway in the intake air course. After traveling approximately 1,800 feet, the crew smelled smoke. The crew continued traveling in the mantrip for approximately 400 feet before they encountered light smoke. Following the roadway, the mantrip turned right
and traveled through a crosscut into an adjacent intake entry, where the crew encountered dense, black smoke that prevented further travel by mantrip. The crew immediately exited the mantrip and began traveling outby on foot toward a personnel door. The miners traveled from 100 to 225 feet in smoke before donning their Self Contained Self Rescuers (SCSRs). After donning their SCSRs, groups of miners held onto each other in the dense smoke, feeling their way along the coal rib as they moved
outby. Ten of the miners found the personnel door and entered the clear air in the belt entry.
Once in the smoke-free air, the miners discovered that Don Bragg and Ellery Hatfield were missing. Three miners returned to the smoke-filled intake air course to search for the missing men, but were unable to find them and re-entered the belt entry. The ten miners continued the evacuation via the alternate escapeway to a safe area outby the
fire. Miners from 2 Section and the longwall section assisted in attempts to reduce the air flow to the fire before being evacuated to the surface.
Mine management personnel traveled underground in an attempt to locate the missing miners and extinguish the fire, but were unsuccessful. Meanwhile, mine rescue teams were called to the mine to continue the rescue and firefighting efforts. Smoke and heat hampered search and rescue activities as the fire continued burning. On January 21, the
bodies of the two missing miners were discovered approximately 575 feet apart in NEM, and transported to the surface. The fire was fully extinguished on January 24.
For those who haven't followed this story, you may now be wondering what caused the fire and why smoke in the escapeway was so dense that two men suffocated trying to flee the mine?
The fire occurred as a result of frictional heating when the longwall belt became misaligned in the 9 Headgate longwall belt takeup storage unit. Frictional heating ignited accumulations of combustible materials which served as a readily ignitable fuel. This further contributed to the ignition of the belt and to the intensity and extent of the mine fire. The required fire suppression system was not installed and there was no
water available in the area to fight the fire. Airflow carried the smoke from the fire to the No. 7 Belt entry and then into the primary escapeway for 2 Section because stoppings that were required to maintain separation between the belt entry and the primary escapeway for 2 Section had previously been removed.
This is of course another Massey Energy Co. disaster in a string of preventable disasters that have cost coal miners their lives. Don Blankenship managed to keep his job in 2006 as he does to this day, even following the worst mining disaster in 40 years.
Massey's Aracoma Coal Co. has agreed to plead guilty to 10 criminal charges, including one felony, and pay $2.5 million in criminal fines, according to documents filed in U.S. District Court in Charleston.
Aracoma agreed to plead guilty to not providing a proper escape tunnel out of the underground mine, to not conducting required evacuation drills, and to faking a record book so it appeared the drills had been done.
The company has also agreed to pay $1.7 million in civil fines to settle safety violations related to the fire that claimed the lives of miners Don Bragg and Ellery Hatfield.
In a sweeping deal with prosecutors and the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration, the Massey operation will also resolve more than 1,300 safety violations at Aracoma and Massey's nearby Hernshaw Mine since the Jan. 19, 2006, fire.
Full article found HERE
The civil and criminal fines amounted to largest government penalty ever in a coal-mining death case. But George W. Bush's MSHA had a role to play in the disaster. MSHA's internal review of the Aracoma disaster can be whittled down to 4 very serious faults:
- Deficiency: Inspectors did not conduct thorough and complete inspections of the Aracoma Mine #1.
- Deficiency: Personnel failed to follow explicit Agency policy regarding inspections.
- Deficiency: Inspectors failed to exercise their authority in a manner that demonstrated an appreciation for the importance of strict enforcement of the Mine Act and its direct effect on health and safety of miners.
- Deficiency: Inspectors did not recognize and/or cite several violations associated with the atmospheric monitoring system (AMS) during one or more inspections. An alarm unit for 2 section had never been installed as required. The absence of the required section alarm was not identified or cited. Numerous citations and orders to the AMS have been issued following the fire.
Source: MSHA Internal Review Report, June 2007. (This document is password protected and I cannot copy and paste selected text. It's worth the time, if you have it to spare, to read these 233 pages.)
The widows of Don Bragg and Ellery Hatfield settled out of court with Massey Energy Co. in 2008 for an undisclosed amount. "It's time for MSHA to step up to the plate and acknowledge to its victims that which it has already acknowledged to itself," said the attorney for the two women.
I couldn't agree more.
Read the full text of the document filed in Charleston Federal Court under the Federal Tort Claims Act HERE