How A 1968 Disaster In A Coal Mine Changed The Industry By MOLLY BORN • NOV 23, 2018 WV Public Broadcasting

Originally published on November 23, 2018 4:05 pm

Fifty years ago this week, 78 men were killed when a coal mine exploded in West Virginia. The Farmington Mine Disaster devastated a small town and ushered in new health and safety laws nationwide.

George Butt was in the first grade in November 1968 when his father put in his two weeks' notice at the No. 9 mine. Harold Wayne Butt had worked as a coal miner but planned to switch careers, to become a postmaster.

"They came and got me out of class and told me I had to go home," George Butt said. "Ended up finding out the tragedy when I got there."

Of the 99 miners underground that day, only 21 were able to escape. At a memorial service this week to honor the dead, George Butt's voice broke as he spoke of his father, who was 42 years old when when a series of explosions stemming from a buildup of methane gas tore through the mine.

"There's not a day that goes by," he said, trailing off. "Sorry. Yeah, it's tough. November's a very hard month."

The mine disaster drew national attention to the small town roughly 100 miles south of Pittsburgh, said Bonnie Stewart, a journalist and professor at California State University Fullerton. Her 2012 book, No.9: The 1968 Farmington Coal Mine Disaster, chronicles the explosions and their aftermath.

"It was on the nightly news. People across the world could see what had happened and what a tragedy like that looked like," said Stewart, formerly a professor at West Virginia University.

New regulations

Early the next year, 40,000 West Virginia coal miners staged a wildcat strike to demand better health benefits and raise awareness about black lung disease. In Washington, widows of the late miners testified before Congress, which ultimately passed the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969.

"It was the beginning of a real federal oversight for the health and safety of the people who go underground," Stewart said.

Under the new law, mines were subject to more federal inspections, fines for safety violations and criminal penalties for the most egregious ones. Miners disabled by black lung could receive benefits.

"By their deaths," Stewart wrote in her book, "the 78 coal miners prevented thousands of underground miners from a similar fate."

Davitt McAteer, a mine safety expert who went on to work for the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration under President Clinton, grew up in nearby Fairmont, W.Va. A law student at West Virginia University in November 1968, McAteer called safety advocate Ralph Nader to ask how they might help push together for tougher health and safety standards. Nader's staff, McAteer said, helped to write the landmark 1969 law.

"It was pivotal for this industry, for the health and safety movement around the country. You saw other industries copy what the mine industry was doing in terms of education, in terms of research, in terms of regulations," McAteer said.

An annual memorial service

In Farmington, hundreds attended this year's memorial service, including West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin. Manchin grew up in Farmington and lost an uncle in the mine disaster, one of many such disasters in the state's history. The No. 9 mine alone had a history of serious safety violations, and a 1954 explosion there killed 16 men.

"It's awful when you have so many tragedies that have to happen before necessary changes are made. But the miners have paid. They've paid with their sweat and their blood," Manchin said.

Nonetheless, George Butt said he still feels "bitter." His family and others are suing the mine company all these years later. Murray Energy now owns Consolidation Coal, and company attorneys have argued the Farmington families should have filed the lawsuit within two years of the disaster. Most families reached a $10,000 settlement with the coal company shortly after the explosion.

But the families say it wasn't until 2014 that they uncovered new evidence to support the latest suit: A head electrician turned off an alarm on a ventilation fan used to rid the mine of deadly methane gas. If the alarm had sounded, power to the mine would have been shut off. A 1990 federal report revealed that a build-up of methane gas caused by poor ventilation contributed to the explosion.

In 2015, a retired federal mine inspector, Larry Layne, wrote in a sworn affidavit that a mine electrician named Leonard Sacchetti told him in 1970 that Sacchetti helped the mine's head electrician, Alex Kovarbasich, disable the alarm.

Layne wrote the memo in 1970, but said in the affidavit that Sacchetti asked him not to use his name. Bonnie Stewart first uncovered Layne's memo in 2008 while researching her book, and she learned that the then-district manager for the U.S. Bureau of Mines ordered the memo to be filed away. Stewart found it at the U.S. Department of Labor mine library in Beckley, W.Va.

"It was my understanding," Layne wrote in 2015, "that Consolidated Coal Company directed Alex Kovarbasich to disconnect the [alarm] before the November 20, 1968 explosion."

Timothy Bailey, an attorney for the families, said it wasn't the memo, but the discovery that the company played a role that became his "smoking gun."

"It's the information that a member of management was involved that gave the information necessary to file the suit, and we filed the suit within two years of learning that information," he said.

But a judge threw out the lawsuit last year. The families have appealed, and earlier this year, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals asked the West Virginia Supreme Court to weigh in on the statute of limitations.
Copyright 2018 West Virginia Public Broadcasting. To see more, visit West Virginia Public Broadcasting.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Fifty years ago this week, 78 men were killed when a coal mine exploded in West Virginia. The Farmington Mine disaster devastated a small town and ushered in new health and safety laws nationwide. As part of our series on landmark events from 1968, Molly Born of West Virginia Public Broadcasting reports.

MOLLY BORN, BYLINE: George Butt was in the first grade in November 1968 when his father put in his two weeks' notice at the No. 9 mine. Harold Wayne Butt had worked as a coal miner but planned to switch careers to become a postmaster.

GEORGE BUTT: And they came and got me out of class and told me I had to go home and ended up finding out the tragedy when I got there.

BORN: George Butt and his family attended a memorial service this week. They were honoring those who died when a series of explosions stemming from a buildup of methane gas tore through the coal mine 50 years ago.

BUTT: There's not a day that goes by - sorry - yeah, it's tough. November is a very hard month.

BORN: Harold Butt was 42 years old when he died. Of the 99 miners underground that day, only 21 were able to escape. Bonnie Stewart is a journalist and a college professor who wrote a book about the disaster. She says it drew national attention.

BONNIE STEWART: It was on the nightly news. People across the world could see what had happened and what a tragedy like that looked like.

BORN: After the disaster, 40,000 West Virginia coal miners staged a wildcat strike to demand better health benefits and raise awareness about black lung disease. And in Washington, widows of the late miners testified before Congress, which ultimately passed the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act.

STEWART: It was the beginning of a real federal oversight for the health and safety of the people who go underground.

BORN: Under the new law, mines were subject to more federal inspections, fines for safety violations and criminal penalties for the most egregious violations. Miners disabled by black lung could receive benefits. Davitt McAteer is a mine safety expert who grew up in a nearby town.

DAVITT MCATEER: It was pivotal for this industry and for the health and safety movement around the country. You saw other industries copy what the mine industry was doing in terms of education, in terms of research, in terms of regulations.

JOE MANCHIN: And that must be our commitment to never forget. I love you all. I'm so thankful to be here.

(APPLAUSE)

BORN: In Farmington, hundreds attended this year's memorial service earlier this week, including West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, who grew up there. He lost an uncle in the mine disaster, one of many in the state's history.

MANCHIN: It's awful when you have so many tragedies that have to happen before necessary changes are made. But the miners have paid. They've paid with their sweat and their blood.

BORN: Nonetheless, George Butt says he's still bitter. His family and others are suing the mine company all these years later. Murray Energy now owns Consolidation Coal. The company's attorneys have argued the Farmington families should have filed the lawsuit within two years of the disaster. But it wasn't until 2014 that they uncovered new evidence. They say the mine's head electrician turned off an alarm on a fan used to rid the mine of deadly methane gas. If the alarm had sounded, power to the mine would have shut off. Tim Bailey is an attorney for the families.

TIM BAILEY: It's the information that a member of management was involved that gave the information necessary to file the suit. And we filed the suit within two years of learning that information.

BORN: A judge threw out the lawsuit last year. The families have appealed. For NPR News, I'm Molly Born in Mannington, W.Va.

(SOUNDBITE OF MBO MENTHO'S "SEA MIST") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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Farmington Mine Disaster, Energy and Environment

Injury Rates Jump at Coal Giant Murray's West Virginia Mines Oct. 25, 2018, at 7:27 a.m.

Injury Rates Jump at Coal Giant Murray's West Virginia Mines

Oct. 25, 2018, at 7:27 a.m.

BY RICHARD VALDMANIS and Valerie Volcovici

(Reuters) - Injury rates have more than doubled at five West Virginia coal mines acquired by Murray Energy Corp. in 2013, according to a Reuters review of federal data, as the firm sharply increased the amount of coal produced per manhour.

Although injuries and productivity rates rose over the same period, the causes of the increase in injuries remain unknown and could include a host of factors in the complex business of underground coal mining.

Murray - the nation’s largest underground coal mining company with about 6,000 employees producing more than 60 million tonnes of coal annually - bought the mines from rival CONSOL Energy. Those mines now account for more than half the firm’s production.

The injury rate at the five mines averaged 6.35 per 200,000 work hours last year, up from 2.79 in 2013, the last year CONSOL operated them, according to data from the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration. That’s the highest injury rate for the group in a decade and 70 percent above the national average for underground mines, the data show.

At the same time, coal output per manhour at the five mines rose nearly 50 percent since 2013 to 5.7 tons in 2017, according to MSHA figures. By comparison, the industry average in 2015 - the last year for which industry-wide data is available - was 3.4 tons per manhour.

Murray spokesman Cody Nett said that productivity has no correlation to injury rates. Strategies that Murray has used to increase output at the mines - such as continuing production through the overnight maintenance shift and keeping machinery and vehicles running during shift changes - are "standard practices widely utilized throughout the industry," Nett said.

Nett said the injury rate at the former CONSOL mines was inflated by false claims from workers who took time off for other reasons. He also attributed the doubling of injury rates since Murray acquired the mines to under-reporting by the previous owner during the preceding years - an assertion disputed by the Department of Labor and its Mines Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), which collects the data.

Regulators did cite CONSOL for under-reporting in a 2013 audit. But MSHA later revised the company’s data to include injuries that CONSOL initially failed to properly report, said MSHA spokeswoman Amy Louviere.

Asked about the agency’s adjustments, Nett said it was “flat out incorrect” that the mine safety agency had corrected CONSOL’s data.

CONSOL spokesman Zach Smith declined to comment on the company’s 2013 reporting violations.

The injury rate at the five mines translated to about 200 injuries requiring days off work in 2017. Workers at the five sites have suffered 159 injuries so far in 2018, according to the MSHA data.

Murray controls six other mines - in Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois, and Utah - and each has an injury rate below the national average, according to the data. The company has won numerous safety awards in recent years, including from the U.S. government's National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health in 2015.

Davitt McAteer, a mine safety expert in West Virginia who had directed MSHA under former President Bill Clinton, said that many factors could have played into the increased injury rates at the Murray mines in West Virginia.

"Those particular mines are decades old, meaning miners are having to work deeper, more complicated coal seams, with aging equipment and infrastructure,” he said, adding that such conditions are more dangerous for workers.

The company’s CEO, Robert Murray, is among the coal sector’s most vocal advocates for rollbacks of environmental and safety oversight, frequently arguing that government regulation is unnecessarily onerous and costly for companies.

Murray Energy has also sued the government to invalidate an Obama-era rule called the Pattern of Violations rule, intended to beef up enforcement of safety standards against repeat offenders.

That case, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, is now in settlement negotiations with the Trump administration.

(Reporting by Richard Valdmanis and Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Brian Thevenot)

Copyright 2018 Thomson Reuters.

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Welcome to www.DavittMcateer.com

J. Davitt McAteer is an American lawyer, author, and activist from Fairmont, West Virginia. McAteer was appointed to the position of assistant secretary for the Mine Safety and Health Administration from 1993 to 2000 under President Bill Clinton. Throughout his career, McAteer has been an advocate for safe working conditions for miners, particularly in the coal industry. After the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster of 2010, where an explosion caused by negligence led to the death of 29 miners, McAteer Served on Governor Earl Ray Tomblin's independent investigation panel to determine the cause of the explosion. McAteer is the author of "Monongah: The Tragic Story of the 1907 Monongah Mine Disaster". 
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Davitt McAteer: South Africa's new leader has the experience to get his country back on track

Davitt McAteer: South Africa's new leader has the experience to get his country back on track

• By Davitt McAteer
 
• Mar 18, 2018

• South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa, union organizer, negotiator, constitution drafter, industrialist and mining magnate, is off to a fast start as his country’s fourth post-apartheid president. He needs to be, given the Augean stable he inherits from Jacob Zuma whose by-the-rules sacking he adroitly engineered in early February.

  Zuma, a populist with a culturally conservative rural base, handed his family and friends the keys to South Africa’s treasury and let them drive Africa’s most advanced economy into the ditch, leaving it almost as wrecked as it was in the dying days of apartheid. Unemployment is at levels last experienced in the U.S. in the 1930s. Per capita GDP is falling. With Moody’s threatening to downgrade South Africa’s rand-denominated debt to junk, there is little juice to prime the pump.

  

  If anyone is up to the challenge, it is Ramaphosa, whom I first met in 1983 when he was successfully building South Africa’s National Union of Mineworkers to represent workers in the gold, platinum and other mines then at the heart of the South African economy. It was a remarkable feat against impossible odds.

  The South Africa mining industry’s health and safety record at the time was appalling with 600 or more deaths annually in the gold mines alone. I was running the Occupational Health and Safety Law Center in Washington and the union sought our help. Virtually all the victims were black, treated as disposable and barred from skilled jobs that required certification, including foreman. They lived without wives or family in huge fenced-off camps under armed guard. Discipline was brutal.

  
  Ramaphosa was not what I expected. He had endured extended spells of solitary confinement for his politics but retained his sense of humor. Was he worried the authorities would have us watched? I asked.He laughed. “You can be sure they will follow you, tap your phone and know of every contact you make. But they’re as dumb and mistake-prone as we are, so they will screw it up just like we do.”We drove at breakneck speed (he is a notoriously bad driver) to one of South Africa’s largest gold mines, where he invited me to join his miners for lunch in their segregated mess hall. An armed guard halted us: No whites allowed.As if on cue, a phalanx of 300 miners appeared out of nowhere. Ramaphosa calmly told the guard I was his guest. The guard looked at the phalanx and stood aside.Over stew, I said that had been a little unsettling.Simply part of the transition from the old South Africa to the new, my host chuckled.For the next several years, we worked on a safety program for his members. I watched Ramaphosa emerge as the ANC’s lead negotiator in the bloody but ultimately miraculous process that led to Nelson Mandela’s election in 1994. He would go on to perform the same role in the drafting of South Africa’s new constitution.His formidable strengths as a negotiator and organizer, his ability to out-prepare adversaries and his mastery of strategic patience earned him the respect of mine owners and politicians alike.Mandela hoped Ramaphosa would succeed him, but the job went to Thabo Mbeki. Ramaphosa, a lawyer by training with a strong entrepreneurial bent — he launched a construction company before becoming a labor organizer — turned his attention to becoming a captain of industry and to seeing that the commanding heights of the South African economy began to look less like the old South Africa.Critics complain he has accumulated wealth while the mass of South Africans remains locked in poverty. If so, one might equally condemn Warren Buffett and Jeff Bezos for failing to solve the problem of poverty and inequality in this country.

  Ramaphosa, a “pragmatic visionary” in the phrase of one biographer, comes superbly equipped. He has dealt successfully with South Africa’s most daunting dilemmas from a uniquely wide range of perspectives. He has the humility not to think of himself as the sole savior of the country. His sense of humor will keep him grounded in the long battles ahead. And polls show he has the support he needs to face down radicals and populists inside and outside the ANC.

  Stimulus, Ramaphosa recognizes, must come in the shape of private investment, which means restoring business confidence. With the return of ministers Zuma fired for being honest, competent and respectful of reality, he has put in place a solid economic team.

  He still has to be wary of a backlash from the left. In his final weeks in office, Zuma tried to save himself by promising free university education, a piece of crowd-pleasing fiscal folly Ramaphosa will now have to walk back. He will also need to reassure markets that his heavily hedged lip-service in support of uncompensated land expropriation is just that, and a constitutional impossibility besides.

  Detoxing South Africa after the Zuma years will be hard, but with Cyril Ramaphosa there is hope. Rest assured he will not be spending his early mornings tweeting mindlessly about whatever pops into his head.

  Best of luck to this solid, honorable man and his country.Davitt McAteer, an attorney and author, headed the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration from 1992 to 2000.

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Mines owned by Gov. Justice missed deadline for installing safety tech By Kate Mishkin Staff writer Apr 24, 2018 (0)

Mines owned by Gov. Justice missed deadline for installing safety tech

• By Kate Mishkin Staff writer
 
• Apr 24, 2018

Two mines owned by Gov. Jim Justice are among only three across West Virginia that failed to install life-saving technology to prevent miners from being crushed to death by fast-moving machinery in underground coal mines on the job.

The two McDowell County underground mines, Pay Car 57 and Pay Car 58, missed the deadline to install proximity detection systems, which shut down underground mining machines before they get too close to workers, according to violation reports obtained by the Gazette-Mail.

The systems would save miners from one of the most common causes of injury and death: being crushed by machinery. Across the country, 35 miners died by being pinned, crushed or struck by continuous mining machines in underground coal mines between 1984 and 2015, according to the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration. Proximity detection systems, which include a machine-mounted component and wearable tag, could prevent 50 injuries and 10 deaths nationwide over the next decade, according to MSHA.

The state’s top inspectors started urging officials to require proximity detection systems as early as 2008, but the Board of Coal Mine Health and Safety didn’t vote to mandate it until 2014.

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A West Virginia newspaper is in bankruptcy. The powerful coal industry celebrates. By Steven Mufson The Washington Post Feb 17, 2018 Updated Feb 17, 2018

A West Virginia newspaper is in bankruptcy. The powerful coal industry celebrates.

Google Street image

The offices of The Charleston Gazette-Mail on Virginia Street in Charleston, W.Va.

• By Steven Mufson 
  The Washington Post
• Feb 17, 2018 Updated Feb 17, 2018
• One day after the Charleston Gazette-Mail declared bankruptcy, coal industry attorney Robert McLusky made light of the newspaper's plight.
  Speaking at a West Virginia mining symposium Jan. 31, McLusky told the hundreds of executives there that he was sorry that the Gazette-Mail's hard-hitting coal correspondent Ken Ward wasn't there. Playing off the possibility that reporters would get "pink slips," McLusky held up a pink sheet of paper on which he had printed Ward's name and a notice of potential layoffs at the newspaper.
  The crowd laughed.
  McLusky later called Ward to apologize. "I took a shot in front of a pro-coal audience that I regret, that I shouldn't have taken," he said in an interview.
  Yet McLusky's comments betrayed the ill will between the coal industry, which has dominated the economy and politics of West Virginia for the better part of a century, and the state's premier newspaper, the feisty Gazette-Mail, which has played an important role in checking the industry's power.
  The Gazette-Mail hasn't won many friends in coal country, where executives worry more about mining jobs than they do about the 210 jobs in danger at the Charleston newspaper. McLusky said: "I think it's safe to say that the coal industry as a whole does not view the Gazette as giving them balanced coverage."
  Others see it differently. "It has been the voice of reason in our state," said Davitt McAteer, a former head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration who led an independent investigation of the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster. "When you have a one-horse economy as West Virginia is and has been, the fact that there's one paper willing to not be a lap dog for that industry" is important, he said.
  The incident at the mining conference - which was reported by industry news publication S&P Global correspondent Taylor Kuykendall - lasted just a moment. But over the past century, newspapers and coal mining companies have grown rich and now poor together, both victims of new technologies and broader changes in the economy. And both are hoping for survival, if not revival.
  The Gazette-Mail will probably be bought by Ogden Newspapers for $11 million. The bankruptcy court will decide how to divide that among creditors, who are owed more than $31 million. Nearly half that amount, $15 million, is owed to United Bank, and $12 million is owed to the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.
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Citizen science gathering planned Times West Virginian Sep 5, 2016

MORGANTOWN — The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is teaming with West Virginia University, Trout Unlimited and several other advocacy groups to hold a citizen science gathering later this month in Morgantown.

The event will be at the WVU College of Law on Sept. 24 from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. and will include presentations and roundtable discussions about the applications of citizen science.

Citizen science, or “citsci,” involves the collection of environmental data by concerned citizens. This data can sometimes be used to shape environmental policy, but often there is confusion on the part of the citizens about best practices for collection and presentation of that data. The purpose of this gathering is to help eliminate some of that confusion.

“Citizen volunteers and monitors are the backbone of a good regulatory program,” said Wendy Radcliff, the DEP’s environmental advocate. “They care about their community and work hundreds of volunteer hours each year to preserve and protect it.”

Renowned coal mine safety expert Davitt McAteer will speak on the legal applications of citizen science, and there will be presentations from WVU’s Michael McCawley, Gretchen Gehrke of PublicLab.org and Ryan Grode of the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project.

The registration fee for the gathering is $20, and the registration deadline is Sept. 14.

To register or for more information, contact Diana Smith at 304-926-0499 ext. 1329 or diana.k.smith@wv.gov.

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Trump DOJ urges court to not hear Blankenship appeal

• Ken Ward Jr.
 
• Aug 25, 2017

• 
  

• 
  

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The Trump administration Friday urged the U.S. Supreme Court not to hear former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship’s appeal of his conviction for conspiring to violate federal mine safety and health standards at Massey’s Upper Big Branch Mine, where 29 miners died in an April 2010 explosion.

U.S. Department of Justice attorneys filed a legal brief that asked the court to deny Blankenship’s petition seeking further review of his case. Blankenship had already served a year in federal prison, the maximum allowable for his conviction, but has been waging a self-funded public relations campaign saying he was wrongly convicted and arguing his widely-discredited theories about the cause of the Upper Big Branch explosion.

The Justice Department response comes three months after Blankenship’s defense attorneys filed their Supreme Court petition and follows the department twice receiving extensions of time from the court.

Blankenship’s lawyers argue that the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld his conviction, was wrong on two legal points: They say that U.S. District Judge Irene C. Berger incorrectly instructed the trial jury that Blankenship’s “reckless disregard” of federal mine safety and health standards amounted to the criminal willfulness needed for a conviction and that Berger was wrong to deny the defense the chance for a second cross-examination of former Massey official Chris Blanchard, a major government witness.

In their 31-page response, the DOJ mostly repeats the findings of the appeals court and tells the justices that the 4th Circuit and Berger were correct.

Regarding the definition of criminal willfulness, the DOJ brief says that the 4th Circuit correctly held that a mine operator willfully violates a safety standard if he either knows that his conduct violates that standard or recklessly disregards the standard’s requirement.

A footnote says that Blankenship “could not plausibly argue” that he lacked knowledge of relevant safety standards, because “he received and reviewed ‘daily reports’ of citations” at Upper Branch that specifically identified the mine’s safety violations.

Justices have not yet decided if they will hear the case, but a Supreme Court petition is a long short. The court hears only about 80 cases a year out of the 7,000 to 8,000 appeals that are filed annually. About another 100 cases are decided by the court without a hearing, according to the court’s website.

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WV coal miner killed Ken Ward Jr. May 19, 2017

A coal miner was killed late Thursday in Wyoming County, officials confirmed Friday.

Luches Rosser, 44, of Man, was killed while he was working at the Pinnacle Mine, an underground operation near Pineville, according to state and federal agencies and the United Mine Workers union, which represents hourly workers at the mine.

Rosser is the fourth coal miner to die on the job this year in West Virginia. Three miners died in West Virginia in all of 2016, according to data from the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration. This year’s total of mining deaths is also greater than the state’s count of two for the entire 2015 calendar year. Seven coal miners have died on the job nationwide so far in 2017, according to MSHA.

The Pinnacle Mine is controlled by ERP Compliant Fuels, a firm started by a group called the Virginia Conservation Legacy Fund, which has been buying up troubled coal properties in the hope of using profits for tree-planting reclamation that would help fight climate change.

ERP general counsel Brent Mickum described Rosser’s death as having been classified as involving “haulage,” which would mean it occurred during the transport of coal or possibly supplies. Mickum said he had few other details, but that, “He was treated at the site to try to resuscitate him and those efforts, sadly, were not effective.”

Mickum said that Rosser was married and had four children. He said he had no other details.

The state Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training said in a short prepared statement that Rosser was operating an electric-powered track- mounted underground locomotive at the time of the incident. The state said the incident occurred at 11:18 p.m.

Amy Louviere, an MSHA spokeswoman, said the accident happened Thursday night and that Rosser died Friday morning at a local hospital.

Preliminary information from MSHA was that Rosser and another miner were traveling in the supply locomotive when a pole that connects the locomotive to its power supply wire came off that wire, which is known as a “trolley wire.”

“While the locomotive was still moving, the victim raised up to grab the trolley pole to place it back on the trolley wire, when his head contacted the mine roof,” according to the preliminary information from MSHA.

Gov. Jim Justice’s office issued a statement in which the governor said he and his wife were praying for Rosser and his family.

“It’s never easy to see someone so young leave us and it breaks my heart when West Virginia loses a member of the coal community,” the statement said. “I spent many years of my childhood in Wyoming County and my roots are deep there. Great coal mining families always come together, and that’s what we have to do at this time.

Grant Herring, the governor’s press secretary, did not respond to a question asking what actions the administration was taking in response to this year’s increase in coal-mining deaths in West Virginia.

One of the four deaths occurred at a coal preparation plant owned by the governor’s family mining operation. The company, Justice Low Seam Mining, was fined the state maximum of $10,000 for a violation cited by state inspectors at the preparation plant, which was named the JC Jim Justice II plant for the governor.

Longtime mine safety advocate Davitt McAteer said Friday that the increase in deaths so far this year should be a concern for the state’s coal industry, for regulators and for political leaders.

“When you see the numbers drifting, then you have to say, ‘Is there something in the system that should be in place that is not being carried out?’ ” McAteer said. “You have to look at the pattern. It’s worrying and it’s something someone ought to take a hard look at.”

Reach Ken Ward Jr. at kward@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-1702 

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Gazette editorial: WV’s disposable miners-Mar 22, 2017

Incredibly, Republicans who control West Virginia’s Legislature want to weaken coal mine safety policing. One bill, Senate Bill 582, would strip state inspectors of the power to issue violation notices to mines unless they can prove there’s “imminent danger” of death or injury. Instead, the safety agents could issue only tepid “compliance assistance visit notices.”

“It completely guts the state laws,” United Mine Workers union safety director Josh Roberts said. “You’re taking back decades of laws.”

Mine safety crusader Davitt McAteer said the GOP bill is “breathtaking in scope,” adding:

“It’s shocking that, after all these years and the number of West Virginians who have died in the mines, for the state to even consider this.”

The New York Times said of West Virginia’s backpedal:

The Upper Big Branch Miners Memorial is unveiled in Whitesville in 2012.

KENNY KEMP | Gazette-Mail file photo

“President Trump’s vow to bring back the coal industry’s heyday is a delusion. But it’s already inspiring Republican legislatures in Appalachia to resurrect a grim element of those boom times: loose safety laws that endangered miners’ lives and protected owners’ profits.”

The national newspaper said the Trump administration is “stocked with anti-environment industry sycophants” who want to enrich mine owners. “To that end, it is moving to help surface mine operators by eliminating protections for Appalachian streams and hamlets inundated by mine wastes.”

It continued: “In West Virginia, the Republican-controlled Legislature is aiming to weaken mining law by replacing actual safety inspections with something termed ‘compliance visits and education.’ State safety and health standards, developed across years amid the grief of repeated mining disasters, would be eliminated. Powerful West Virginia lawmakers are behind the measure, which marks a sad retreat from the statehouse safety concerns voiced in 2010 when the Upper Big Branch disaster took 29 miners’ lives.”

Appalachian politicians traditionally pander to coal owners, the paper said, “but this latest bout, launched in tandem with Mr. Trump’s fantasy job promises, can only leave remaining miners in greater danger on the job.”

Even if all those coal jobs did come roaring back, West Virginia would still want its miners to come home after every shift. West Virginia lawmakers, of all people in the world, should understand that and work to make it happen.

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