Upper Big Branch
cmonforton | April 5, 2013Three years ago today, April 5, 2010, at approximately 3:02 pm (ET) a coal dust explosion ripped through Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch mine in southern West Virginia. Twenty-nine miners were killed by the blast, suffering fatal injuries from the explosion itself or from carbon monoxide poisoning. They were:
Carl Calvin "Pee Wee" Acord, 52
Jason Atkins, 25
Christopher Bell, 33
Gregory Steven Brock, 47
Kenneth A. Chapman, 53
Robert E. Clark, 41
Cory Thomas Davis, 20
Charles Timothy Davis, 51
Michael Lee Elswick, 56
William "Bob" Griffith, 54
Steven "Smiley" Harrah, 40
Edward Dean Jones,…
cmonforton | January 23, 2013In the month's preceding the deadly explosion in April 2010 that killed 29 coal miners, Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch (UBB) mine had racked up hundreds of serious violations of safety standards. In 2009 alone, this included 48 orders from federal mine inspectors to withdraw workers from the UBB mine because of dangerous conditions. But Massey knew how to game the system. Mine managers would make a couple tweaks, correct the immediate problem, and it was back to mining coal. usually within an hour or so. There was no real consequence for their or other mine operator's repeated…
cmonforton | September 6, 2012As Liz Borkowski noted on Tuesday, we started a new tradition this year to mark Labor Day in the U.S. We published The Year in U.S. Occupational Health & Safety: Fall 2011 - Summer 2012. The 42-page report highlights some of the key research and activities in the U.S. on worker health and safety topics.
We know that many advocates, reporters and researchers look forward every April to the AFL-CIO’s Death on the Job report with its compilation of data on work-related injuries reported, number of federal and state inspections, violations cited, and penalties assessed. We set out to…
lborkowski | August 21, 2012by Beth Spence
Last week a friend and I visited the memorial dedicated to the miners who were killed in the 2010 Upper Big Branch (UBB) mine disaster. The massive 48-foot granite structure with 29 ghostly silhouettes is a powerful tribute to the lost miners and to the industry that has been so dominant in the Appalachian region.
It is fitting that the memorial is in Whitesville, nestled in the Coal River Valley not far from where coal was first discovered in West Virginia, and that it stands on the very site where, in the days and weeks after the disaster, an organic memorial sprang up to…
cmonforton | July 18, 2012Patty and Gary Quarles lost their only child on April 5, 2010. Gary Wayne Quarles, 33, was part of the crew operating the longwall mining machine at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch coal mine. He died that day in a massive coal dust explosion along with 28 other men. Patty's and Gary's life will never be the same. The lives of all the families and close friends of those 29 coal miners changed forever that day. They've suffered losses that few of us will ever understand. A recent story in the Washington Post entitled "After Massey mine disaster killed their son, settlement of millions…
cmonforton | July 3, 2012[Updated (July 5, 2012) below]
"We're still in the dark," explained one family whose son was killed 27 months ago at Alpha Natural Resources (formerly Massey Energy's) Upper Big Branch mine (UBB). That comment came two weeks ago after learning that Alpha, one of the world's largest coal companies, provided its first progress report to U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin as required by the December 2011 Non-Prosecution Agreement. The report was dated June 4, 2012. The progress report is supposed to describe the firm's compliance with the agreement, which settled the U.S. Department of Justice's…
lborkowski | June 11, 2012by Beth Spence
Carrying enlarged photographs of their lost loved ones, family members of three of the 29 miners killed in the 2010 explosion at West Virginia’s Upper Big Branch mine spent June 6-7 in Washington, D.C., pleading with lawmakers to take action to improve mine safety and to stiffen penalties for mining companies that knowingly, willingly and recklessly place miners’ lives at risk.
Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) stands with Clay Mullins, Betty Harrah, Gary Quarles and AFSC staff member Beth Spence. Photo by Bryan Vana, American Friends Service Committee.
Betty Harrah’s photo showed…
cmonforton | April 5, 2012"When the world came to an end" is how Joshua Williams described being inside the Upper Big Branch coal mine at 3:02 pm on April 5, 2010. He knew several crews of coal miners were much deeper inside the dark tunnels than he. An ominous feeling. Coal dust explosions are powerful and deadly. Eight days later, after all the worker-victims were removed from the mine, the death toll was 29.
What's happened in the two years since the disaster? Here's a brief recap:
Eighty-four mine workers at other U.S. mining operations have been killed on-the-job since the April 2010 Upper Big Branch…
lborkowski | March 27, 2012Earlier this month, the Mine Safety and Health Administration released results of an internal review into the agency's actions leading up to the April 5, 2010 Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster, which killed 29 miners in Raleigh County, West Virginia. The Executive Summary reports, "While the Internal Review team did not find evidence that the actions of District 4 personnel or inadequacies in MSHA safety and health standards, policies, or procedures caused the explosion, the team found several instances where enforcement efforts at UBB were compromised because MSHA and District 4 did not follow…
lborkowski | February 22, 2012Earlier today, US Attorney Booth Goodwin charged Upper Big Branch mine superintendent Gary May with "conspiring to impede the Mine Safety and Health Administration's enforcement efforts" at that mine. Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch mine in Raleigh County, West Virginia was the site of numerous health and safety violations leading up to the April 5, 2010 explosion that killed 29 miners. The Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward Jr. has the details on the charges against May:
May, 43, of Bloomingrose, is accused of taking part in a scheme to provide advance warning of government inspections and then…
lborkowski | January 3, 2012While we're on vacation, we're re-posting content from earlier in the year. This post was originally published on May 26, 2011.
By Celeste Monforton
The White House's regulatory czar Cass Sunstein announced today agency roadmaps for a 21-century regulatory system, and the results of the Obama Administration's "unprecedented government-wide review" of existing regulations. I don't know what history books Mr. Sunstein has been reading, but for at least the last 20 years, every Administration has engaged in these regulatory review exercises to identify rules that are "out-of-date, unnecessary,…
cmonforton | December 16, 2011[Updated 1/4/12 below]
The Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward Jr. pointed me yesterday to the latest attack on working people. House and Senate negotiators have apparently come to an agreement on an FY 2012 spending bill (165-page PDF) which includes funding for the Labor Department's Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA). Tacked onto the bill are a litany of favors to special interests, including this one for Big Coal:MSHA is prohibited from spending any funds to complete its health standard to protect miners from developing black lung disease until the Government Accountability Office (…
cmonforton | December 6, 2011The U.S. Department of Labor's Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) released today the findings of its 20 month-long investigation into the Upper Big Branch coal mine explosion. The April 5, 2010 disaster killed 29 workers, seriously injured another worker, and left hundreds of grieving family members and friends. MSHA identified 12 violations of safety regulations that contributed to the cause or the severity of the disaster. Nine of the 12 contributory violations were classified as "flagrant" infractions which come with a $220,000 penalty each (for a total of $2.64 million). In…
cmonforton | December 1, 2011The US Department of Labor's Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) is preparing to issue next week its investigation report on the April 5, 2010 coal mine disaster at the Upper Big Branch mine that killed 29 workers. Ken Ward, Jr. at Coal Tattoo reports that MSHA will hold a media briefing at 3:00 pm (EST) on December 6 at its training academy near Beckley WV. The Charleston (WV) Gazette reporter reminds us that December 6 is an ominous date. It marks the 104th anniversary of the Monongah disaster, the worst mining disaster in U.S. history.
MSHA's investigation report will be the…
lborkowski | July 1, 2011The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration has released additional results from its ongoing investigation into the disaster at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch Mine, which killed 29 miners last year in West Virginia. Like the independent investigation team, MSHA investigators cite poorly controlled coal dust, inadequate ventilation, and a corporate culture that emphasized coal production even when mine conditions were unsafe. NPR's Howard Berkes reports that MSHA also documented "a pattern of intimidation" at Upper Big Branch:
According to Kevin Stricklin, the coal mine safety chief at…
lborkowski | May 20, 2011Several news outlets have reported on the findings of the Governor's Independent Investigation Panel into the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster, which killed 29 miners in West Virginia last year. (The report is here; my post on it is here.) Two of the most in-depth articles come from Ken Ward Jr. of the Charleston Gazette and Howard Berkes of NPR, both of whom have immersed themselves in the work of understanding and explaining how this disaster occurred. The Upper Big Branch archives at the Charleston Gazette and NPR are full of the details that have emerged (or been dragged out by these…
lborkowski | May 19, 2011On April 5, 2010, an explosion occurred at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch Mine in Raleigh County, West Virginia. The blast rocketed through 2.5 miles of underground chambers and tunnels nearly 1,000 feet beneath the mountains, and it killed 29 miners and severely injured another. The youngest victim was Cory Thomas Davis, age 20, who loved spending weekends hunting and fishing in the mountains, and the oldest was Benny Willingham, age 61, a Vietnam veteran of the US Air Force who had been a coal miner for 30 years and was five weeks away from retirement.
Shortly after the tragic day, then-…
lborkowski | April 5, 2011One year ago, an explosion at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch Mine in Montcoal, West Virginia killed 29 miners. The Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward Jr., who has covered the disaster and its aftermath extensively, writes today on his Coal Tattoo blog:
Stay tuned today to hear a lot of political leaders talking about coal miners ... They're going to talk about how hard working miners are, and how they put their lives on the line to provide electricity and put food on table for their families. They're going to talk about how we need to remember and honor the dead, and about how these men (well,…
lborkowski | March 10, 2011Celeste wrote last week about how the Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward Jr. broke the story of how a previously unpublished report sent to Congress by the Mine Safety and Health Administration two weeks before the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster warned about serious enforcement lapses, including incomplete inspections and inadequate enforcement actions.
In addition to that story, another of Ward's Charleston Gazette articles last week highlighted another MSHA issue related to that mine disaster, which killed 29 miners at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch Mine in Montcoal, West Virginia:
U.S. Mine…
lborkowski | January 24, 2011On April 5, 2010, a massive explosion at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch Mine in Montcoal, West Virginia, killed 29 miners. Last week, federal Mine Safety and Health Administration investigators briefed victims' relatives on what MSHA thinks happened at the mine. (MSHA's official final report is not expected for another 2-3 months, though.) NPR's Howard Berkes reports that the investigators' presentation "pointed to a tragedy that could have been prevented if the Upper Big Branch coal mine had complied with federal safety regulations."
In a related piece, Berkes explains some of the safety…