Two missing in fire at West Virginia coal mine

by wsws (reposted)

Sat, Jan 21, 2006 8:26AM

Less than three weeks after the Sago Mine disaster claimed the lives of 12 coal miners, two more men were trapped in a West Virginia mine Thursday night after a fire on a conveyor belt spread poisonous carbon monoxide throughout the mine. At the time of this writing, rescuers have not been able to reach the two miners, identified as Ellery Hatfield and Donald Bragg, who were separated from co-workers as they made the two-hour journey to escape the smoke-filled mine.

The fire broke out around 5:36 p.m. Thursday inside the Alma Mine in Melville, about 60 miles southwest of the state capital of Charleston, in Logan County. The mine is owned by Aracoma Coal, a subsidiary of the notoriously anti-labor Massey Energy Corp., the fourth-largest coal company in the US.

In the last two years, the nonunion mine has received more than 200 citations from the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), the most recent on December 20, when the mine was issued seven violations ranging from failure to control coal dust and other combustible materials to a poor ventilation plan. Records show there was fatality at the mine in 1995. The Alma mine, which had an accident rate 30 percent higher than the national average last year, paid $13,000 in fines in 2005.

More
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/jan2006/mine-j21.shtml

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