Miners and their families came to the memorial from UMWA-organized mines throughout the surrounding coalfields. A small number of workers from nonunion mines also came to pay tribute.

In honor of the killed miners, the UMWA called a memorial day for union miners in Alabama the same day as the memorial service. UMWA memorial days are traditionally taken to protest company attacks on the union, as well as to protest serious safety violations and deaths of miners.

In the days after the explosion, miners have been speaking against the unsafe conditions at Jim Walter No. 5 mine. Many said that the main concern of Jim Walter was "getting the coal" and that the Jim Walter bosses did not listen to numerous complaints about dangerous levels of highly explosive methane gas.

Mike Boyd works as a degasser at No. 5, a job that involves extracting methane out of the coal and getting it to the surface. His brother Clarence "Bit" Boyd died in the explosion. Boyd said he warned the company at a meeting on August 24 that without some changes miners are going to be "blown up" in an explosion. He said his warning "fell on deaf ears." In addition, some miners referred to ignitions taking place on the working faces where coal is mined.  
 
Safety not taken seriously by company
Boyd said safety was not taken seriously by the company. One example he gave is that the company didn't organize adequate roof support. He noted, as did other miners, that this is especially important in a "gassy" mine like No. 5 that consistently has high levels of methane gas produced in the mining process. Another concern, said Boyd, is that workers who were supposed to be rock dusters--one of the main ways coal dust is neutralized--were often assigned to other work. Several miners also said the volume of air was insufficient to flush out methane at the working faces.

A number of miners who the Militant spoke with pointed to the bosses' stepped-up productivity drive. This drive to get more coal out of the ground in less time, some suspect, contributed to the conditions that led to the explosion. Robert Tarvin, a miner with more than 20 years experience underground--most of them at Jim Walter No. 5--was one of the workers in the mine at the time of the explosion who managed to survive.

Tarvin and another worker were rock dusting one of the main belt lines at the time of the first explosion and noticed the dust change directions and come back toward them. They went out to the track to check with the motorman working with them, John Knox, but he had already left to find out what happened. Knox died in the second blast. "You can work as much overtime as you want on the sections," Tarvin explained. "On the other hand they don't work between shifts any more on rock dusting and that makes it hard to keep up."

The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) will be in charge of the investigation, joined by the Alabama Department of Industrial Relations, the UMWA, and Jim Walter Resources. Joe Main, who heads up health and safety for the union, said the UMWA will conduct a parallel investigation to the one undertaken by the federal agency. Main was quoted in the Birmingham News as saying that "MSHA may not be effectively enforcing significant problems." Main was the UMWA's International Safety Director at the time of the union investigation of the Wilberg fire.  
 
'No rush to judgment'
In an attempt to head off statements about safety damaging to Jim Walter, many of which have been reported on the front pages of the big-business press in Alabama, David Lauriski, the head of MSHA, said September 27, "We will not rush to judgment. We will not draw conclusions from information that is incomplete." Lauriski was a company "safety specialist" working at the Wilberg mine at the time of the mine fire there in 1984. The Tuscaloosa News helped out the bosses' campaign with a front-page headline, "No 'rush to judgment.'"

At the same time, Lauriski made a point of saying that Jim Walter safety record is 22 percent better than the average for underground coal mines. In a similar vein, Kyle Parks, a company spokesperson, said Jim Walter has "made significant strides in improving its safety record in recent years." Parks also said that "No. 5 has a safety record that is better than the national average," according to the Tuscaloosa News.  
 
Mines had 10,930 safety citations
Statements such as these have struck many miners here as inappropriate at best, given that 13 miners are now dead due to what they see as Jim Walter's negligence. In fact, the company has been handed 10,930 safety citations at its Alabama coal mines over the past five years. Ten days before the fatal explosions at No. 5, MSHA cited Jim Walter Resources for 10 "significant and substantial" safety violations. Three had to do with unsafe roof conditions.

Following the explosion, the company exploited the charged emotions around the September 11 suicide attack to cover up their notorious safety record. "These men gave their lives to help others just as the firefighters and police of New York did nearly two weeks ago," said Don DeFosset, the chief officer of Jim Walter Resources. "These men are heroes," was another comment. U.S. labor secretary Elaine Chao made a similar comparison in her comments at the memorial service.

The memorial event was held at the Brookwood High School stadium. A highlight of the evening was the arrival of a group of about 100 Local 2368 members, who walked together from the union hall to the high school. As miners marched down the street, some Brookwood residents joined in. Out of respect for the miners, no cars behind the march passed by. Many of the union miners wore camouflage and union T-shirts from the 1989–1990 Pittston strike, as well as shirts from the 1993 UMWA contract strike. In the days following the explosions, Local 2368's union hall had become the center of activity. Members of a sister local that organizes the No. 4 mine took on the job of cooking meals for the miners and their families.

Speakers at the memorial service included leaders of UMWA Local 2368; several elected politicians, including Governor Donald Siegelman and U.S. senators Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelley; top officers of Jim Walter Resources; and UMWA international president Cecil Roberts, who spoke last. At the end of his remarks, Roberts read the names of the 13 miners. As he mentioned each name, a member of Local 2368 lit a candle, while the 1,500 people in the stadium raised candles in solidarity with the miners.

Based on back and forth discussion, miners have pieced together some of the main events leading up to the disaster at No. 5. The explosions took place in a relatively new section of the mine. At 2,200 feet, No. 5 is the deepest underground mine in the country. It is also classified as an "ultra" gassy mine. On the day of the explosions, no coal was being produced. That day, a Sunday, 28 miners and 4 bosses were carrying out what is known as "dead" work.

At a September 26 UMWA press conference, held in front of Local 2368's union hall, Cecil Roberts said that based on information the union had at hand the first explosion was caused by a "serious rock fall." The roof fall hit a scoop battery charger, creating a spark (or arc) that ignited methane, the most dangerous gas found in a coal mine. At the time of the fall, three coal miners and one boss were putting up roof supports (cribs) nearby. The fall covered up Gaston "Junior" Adams; the other three were injured in the explosion. These miners were rescued and taken out of the mine. One of the miners, Ray Ashworth, died the next day. As several miners then tried to rescue Adams, a second explosion, described by miners on the scene as "massive," killed 12 miners. According to some miners, they did not know that the first explosion had taken place.

Rickie Rose, a UMWA miner who was calling an ambulance at the time of the explosion, said, "It's hard to explain what happened. It was like time stood still. The next think I knew there was this roaring. Then I could see the wind swirling and the next think I know the air was full of dust." At this critical point the remaining miners close to the explosion knew they had to get out of the mine.

Several miners said the cause of the second explosion was related to the impact of the first. They believe that the explosion blew out nearby brattices--stoppings or walls that help direct ventilation to the working face, which caused an interruption of the air flow. This is what miners call "short-circuiting" the air. In a short period of time, methane built up, causing the explosion. Inadequate ventilation has caused thousands of deaths in the coal mines, many of them through explosions.

At least two miners said the explosion was so massive that flames and debris shot out of the air shaft, located about 1,000 feet from the explosion. There was no place for the miners in the section to go. As one miner said, "It would be like dodging a bullet in the barrel of a gun."

In the weeks and months ahead, Jim Walter Resources safety record will come under close scrutiny as the federal and UMWA investigations get under way. UMWA Local 2368 has a long history of fighting Jim Walter on questions of health and safety, although in the recent period the union has been pushed back.

The proceedings will be watched closely by miners and other working people. The outcome of the investigation will have an important impact on miners around the country.

After more than 37 million gallons of water were pumped into the mine to put out the fires, the first recovery team was sent into the mine on October 3 to begin the search for the bodies of the 12 miners.

The union has set up a Miners Memorial Fund. Contributions to the fund can be sent to: UMWA Local 2368, P.O. Box 99, Brookwood, Alabama, 35444.

Frank Forrestal is a member of the UMWA and works in a underground mine in Pennsylvania. He is the Socialist Workers candidate for mayor of Pittsburgh.
 

The disaster at No. 5 mine is the worst such incident at a coal mine since the Dec. 19, 1984, fire at the Wilberg mine outside Orangeville, Utah, in which 19 members of UMWA Local 2176 and eight company bosses died.

The miners were killed while the company was pressing to set a world record for production in 24 hours using a longwall, the most modern and mechanized machine for mining coal underground. At a press conference following the disaster, UMWA safety director Joe Main said, "These things don't just happen. Usually when fires or explosions occur, safety rules have not been complied with or they have been altered." Emery Mining Corp., which manages the Wilberg mine, was notorious for safety violations. In fact, the company had been cited for 87 citations for violating fire regulations and 29 for violating rock-dusting regulations.

Most important, MSHA had approved a mining plan that allowed coal production even though one of the escape routes was blocked by a rock fall. The miners were trapped and died of smoke inhalation.

In 1983, Wilberg was rated the most productive underground mine in the country. At the same time it had one of the worst accident rates.

The UMWA called the deaths "needless." In their official report, the union investigators concluded, "The UMWA determined through the course of the investigation that the source of the fire was not the cause of the deaths of the miners. It was the failure to provide escape routes that were safely ventilated and the failure to protect miners from fire and smoke that killed them. The company's mining system (approved by MSHA) that was in use at the Wilberg Mine was the cause of the loss of 27 miners' lives."

The Militant wrote several articles on the mine disaster, including "Company greed killed coal miners in Utah," and others on the unsafe conditions and speedup drive at Emery's mines. The articles were so popular that the Militant put out a special four-page supplement so that miners and other working people could have the truth about the disaster, along with information on what the unions can do to fight for safe working conditions.--F.F.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home