In a separate probe of the explosion, investigators of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) declined to question one of the agency’s inspectors as to who had ordered the cutting with a torch of metal roof support straps that intersected with a sealed-off section of the mine—and why.

The blast ripped through the mine in Holmes Mill. According to the county coroner, foreman Amon Brock and miner Jimmy Lee were killed by the explosion. Miners Roy Middleton, George Petra, and Paris Thomas Jr. survived the blast but were trapped underground and suffocated from carbon monoxide.

“Everything needs to be out in the open,” Millie Middleton told the Militant in a July 1 phone interview, regarding the decision by state authorities for a second time to exclude the deceased miners’ relatives, or their representatives, from the state hearings. Millie is Roy Middleton’s mother.

In announcing this decision, Chuck Wolfe, spokesman for the Kentucky Office of Mine Safety, said he wants “as sterile an environment as possible” to encourage witnesses “to be totally candid,” reported the Harlan Daily Enterprise.

The deceased miners’ families counter that the company is represented at the hearings. Relatives of these miners and their supporters picketed the state and federal hearings in June to protest the exclusion. United Mine Workers of America safety official Kenny Johnson and attorney Tony Oppegard, who represent these families, were allowed to attend the federal investigation and ask questions as a result of the protest and the decision of several miners to designate the two as their representatives.

In a departure from earlier procedure, MSHA investigator Richard Herndon announced that Oppegard and Johnson would be limited to written questions of Stanley Sturgill at a June 27 session. Sturgill, an MSHA inspector, was in the Darby No. 1 Mine May 15-17, days before the blast. Oppegard told the Louisville Courier-Journal that in interviews of 28 previous witnesses he had been allowed to ask both verbal and written questions.

Oppegard said only three or four of the 16 questions he submitted for Sturgill on June 27 were asked. Those that MSHA withheld, according to Oppegard, concerned why the miners were cutting the metal roof support straps, such as: did MSHA tell the mine owners to remove the straps; does the intersection of the straps with the seal violate MSHA policy?

Oppegard and Johnson have said the blast was likely caused when a torch miners were using to cut these straps ignited methane gas leaking from a seal built with substandard material.

“One can only assume that MSHA doesn’t want the inspector to be questioned about the main issue in this case,” Oppegard said.
 
 
Related articles:
Lone survivor of Sago disaster: ‘We expected to be rescued’
Federal officials, company refused to use machinery that has saved miners’ lives
Kentucky miners snap up ‘Militant’  
 
 
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