The “Service of Honor, Hope, and Healing” celebrated the lives of these men. The gathering filled the Wesley Chapel and an overflow crowd of 500 watched the event on a big-screen television in the college gym.

Meanwhile, facts continue to emerge showing that the bosses’ drive for profit, and the resulting disregard for safety, led to the miners’ deaths.

Among those at the event was Chuck Knisell of Westover, West Virginia, who used to work at the Sago Mine and knew many of those who died after the January 2 blast. A member of United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) Local 2300 at the Cumberland Mine in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, he told the Dominion Post, “I wanted to come down here and show these guys the (UMWA) are there for them. We’re all miners. We’re all in this together.”

A busload of UMWA members from the Blacksville mine arrived for the memorial, as did carloads of union miners from Loveridge and the Robinson Run mines in West Virginia, and from the Cumberland Mine. Families of some of the 13 miners killed in the 2001 accident at Jim Walters Resources #5 mine in Brookwood, Alabama, were also present. UMWA president Cecil Roberts and other district and international officials attended the ceremony.

In addition to local pastors, speakers included family members of three of those who were killed—Tom Anderson, Jerry Groves, and Terry Helms. West Virginia governor Joseph Manchin promised to “find the cause…of this tragedy.”

Federal and state authorities, however, have done little to enforce safety regulations. In the last two years, the Sago Mine recorded an injury rate nearly three times the national average. Of the 208 safety violations for which the mine was cited last year, 17 of the most serious resulted in fines by the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) of just $1,221. Only $981 has been paid, the Louisville Courier-Journal reported January 12.

In response to growing pressure to produce facts about safety inspections at the mine, on January 10 MSHA took the unusual step of posting information on the 17 most serious Sago Mine citations on its web site. The agency has come under criticism for its past policy of withholding factual information while an investigation is under way, and limiting what is made public afterward.

One document about these safety violations records an MSHA inspector writing, “The operator has shown a high degree of negligence for the health and safety of the miners that work at this coal mine by allowing the conditions to exist.”

MSHA “is going to make everything look and smell like a rose garden,” Dave Blevins, whose father died in the Alabama explosion, told Newsday. If they “would have listened to us and other miners in Alabama, Sago would not have happened.”

“What we need is stricter law enforcement,” Gene Roman, a coal miner at the 84 Mine in Pennsylvania and a member of UMWA Local 1197, told the Militant. “We tell MSHA about conditions in the mine, and they say, there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“In a union mine you have safety rights,” said Brian Braham, a member of UMWA Local 1248. “Now is the time to organize.”

The seals to block off the section of the Sago Mine where the explosion took place were made of Omega Block, a dense fiberglass foam material that is lighter and cheaper than cement blocks. MSHA reported that these seals “were completely destroyed—blown out toward the surface.” Tim Baker, a UMWA spokesperson, said the union has always opposed such materials for mine seals. “Those blocks cannot withstand the pressure,” he stated.

Bennett Hatfield, the CEO of International Coal Group, which owns the Sago Mine, told the media that if miners had had wireless communication devices it would have been possible to direct them to a safe way out. A wired phone was the only method of communication at Sago, and it was destroyed in the blast. His statement highlights the fact that mine bosses have left communication and navigation systems largely unchanged for years in spite of advances in technology. “Miners are using 20-year old technology—it’s been that long,” Dennis O’Dell, UMWA administrator for health and safety, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

On January 13 the Charleston Gazette reported that newly released state mine permit records indicate that there are at least four natural gas wells near the Sago Mine, including one that appears to be adjacent to its sealed area. Three of the wells are actively producing gas.

Members of the state Board of Coal Mine Health and Safety told a January 12 meeting of the body, reports the Gazette, that “at Sago, natural gas could have leaked from the nearby wells’ steel pipes, or seeped into abandoned mine workings that were sealed off from the working mine sections.”

In a phone interview, Darrell Gillespie, who has worked as a roof bolter in union mines in the southern part of the state, noted, “West Virginia laws require oil or natural gas drilling to be at least 1,000 feet from coal mines. There could have been cracks.”

Tony Lane is a coal miner in southwestern Pennsylvania. Brian Williams contributed to this article.
 
 
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