The deaths occurred as coal bosses press their drive to increase productivity and profits at the expense of miners’ lives and limbs. The struggle by 74 coal miners at the Co-Op mine in nearby Huntington has highlighted unsafe working conditions at that nonunion mine, one of the factors leading to their fight to be organized into the United Mine Workers union.

The two mine workers who died in Utah, Russell Crane and Jacob Jorgensen, worked in this coal-rich area. Both worked in nonunion mines, with no union safety committee to enforce safety standards.

Crane, 44, was a longwall shearer operator at Canyon Fuel’s Southern Utah Fuel Co. (Sufco) mine near Salina. He was killed January 3 trying to recover a piece of machinery trapped under a roof collapse. Underground mines in the western states are bored into a mountainside. The operators follow the coal seam into the mountain until it runs out or the cost of removing it outweighs the profit to be reaped from it. As the mine goes deeper, pressure mounts from the mountain bearing down from above.

In a longwall operation, whole “panels” of coal are sliced off the coal face by a rotating shearer, while behind it overhead shields advance one by one to protect the moving head and the operating crew. As the coal is removed, the shields move forward and the underground roof falls in behind them.

In the Sufco incident, Crane and the other workers were assigned to remove a final panel of coal from an area that had already been mined. After adjacent cement supports failed, many of the shields collapsed and were trapped under fallen coal. To salvage the multimillion dollar equipment, the workers—none of whom was injured in the collapse—chained a downed shield to another part of the longwall machine, aiming to pull it free. “During this process, the chain hook broke,” noted MSHA officials in their fatality report. “The remaining part of the hook and the chain assembly recoiled, striking the miner operating the collapsed shield in the head,” killing him.

Three weeks later at Andalex’s Pinnacle mine outside of Price, Jorgensen was driving a diesel tractor in the outside supply yard when his vehicle collided with an idle longwall shield. It was late at night and no one was working with him in the yard. The shield struck the 29-year-old worker directly, dealing a fatal blow, because the tractor had no protective cab or canopy.

In their list of “Best Practices” suggestions posted with each fatality report on their web site, MSHA officials suggest that mine bosses “consider providing protective cabs, canopies, or vertical intrusion shielding pipes on mobile equipment whenever mining height permits.” They also point out that surface work areas should be “sufficiently illuminated at night so that obstacles can be clearly seen.”

In the case of the accident that took Crane’s life, MSHA proposes to ensure people are out of harm’s way before hauling on chains, and to check that hooks are properly attached. Their final suggestion is to “evaluate pillar strength and design before second mining areas containing unusual circumstances, such as setup rooms.” MSHA does not say whether this was done at Sufco.

Since 1999, U.S. coal mining fatalities have averaged just over 34 a year. More than 40 miners a year have died in other mining sectors.

Tamar Rosenfeld is an underground coal miner in Utah.
 
 
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