T he explosion that killed 29 coal miners this month at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia was not just a horrendous tragedy. It may well have been a preventable tragedy – if the regulatory procedure for handling federal citations for apparent safety violations were not so absurd.
As it turns out, the April 5 blast – the nation’s deadliest mining disaster in four decades – came in a Massey Energy Co. mine that already had been cited for hundreds of federal safety violations, some of which were serious enough and close together enough in time to have allowed federal regulators to shut down the mine.
But that didn’t happen because Massey’s management, like that of other coal mining companies, has learned to appeal safety citations consistently and vigorously. Those appeals caused a judicial stay in federal enforcement actions that otherwise might have led to a shutdown of the mine until the safety issues were addressed.
Massey officials claim they have an acceptable safety record. They point to three “Sentinels of Safety” awards given the company by the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration in 2009. But the company’s record at the Big Upper Branch mine, where excessive methane gas is suspected of causing the deadly explosion, depicts a stunning history of safety citations.
According to a report delivered last week to President Obama by his Labor secretary and top officials of the federal mine safety agency, the agency issued 515 citations and orders at the Big Upper Branch mine in 2009, and had issued 124 this year before the explosion.