Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 10, 1993 TAG: 9304100235
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORTON LENGTH: Long
KIN OF MINE BLAST VICTIMS GET TO QUIZ INVESTIGATORS
The work of the governor's special task force overseeing the investigation of the worst coal mine disaster in Virginia in more than 30 years took a human turn Friday.Relatives of eight miners killed in the Wise County coal mine explosion on Dec. 7 got their chance to question investigators from the state Division of Mines - although not directly, as they had hoped.
Family members have been angry with investigators, claiming they're putting too much emphasis on cigarettes and lighters found on three of the dead men and not looking hard enough at why conditions in the mine deteriorated to a dangerous state without being noticed.
Among family members who sat through the two days of hearings at the Norton Holiday Inn was John Sturgill, 25, of Pound, whose father, Claude Sturgill, 49, and uncle, Palmer Sturgill, were killed in the blast.
His father lived on a hill just outside Pound, Sturgill said. "Every Christmas you could tell where he lived because there was millions of Christmas lights everywhere." He had put up the lights the day before the explosion.
Claude Sturgill, the father of five, loved to hunt, boat and fish, like many miners, his son said. "He never got no time off," John Sturgill said. "He worked six nights a week."
Also listening closely to the hearing was Liz Mullins of Clintwood, the 32-year-old widow of Mike Mullins, who operated a mining machine.
The day before he was killed, she and Mike went out to eat and put some Christmas decorations on their porch, said Mullins, the mother of two. "He was going to put up the tree the next day."
Loraine Owens, 30, of Haysi, the widow of miner Brian Owens and mother of a 12-year-old daughter, sat with Mullins throughout both days of hearings.
Her husband was busy building a race car in his spare time with her help, Owens said. He had run enduro races last year at a Coeburn track and was hoping to move up to the "pure stock" division this year. He had No. 43, Richard Petty's number, reserved for his car, she said.
Tony Oppegard, a Lexington, Ky., lawyer, who represents Owens and Mullins and the family of a third dead miner, tried to persuade task force Chairman Jim Robinson to let him and other family representatives question investigators.
Robinson, a former state delegate from Pound, refused, saying he had been advised by the offices of the attorney general and the secretary of economic development not to let family members become directly involved in the questioning. "There may be lawsuits . . . out of this case," he said.
Bill Dickenson, an assistant to Economic Development Secretary Cathleen Magennis, said her office has been very careful to ask Robinson to stick with the charge given the task force by the governor. Magennis is responsible for the Division of Mines.
The task force is not supposed to be involved in the investigation but to oversee it, Dickenson said. Pursuing questions of the families could put the task force into the investigation, he said.
However, Robinson allowed family members to pass on their questions to members of the 10-member task force made up of union, industry and citizen representatives.
Family members wanted answers to questions such as why the state wasn't aware that federal inspectors had found high levels of methane in Southmountain Coal Co.'s No. 3 mine; why problems with explosive coal dust had not been discovered before the explosion; and how the mine's ventilation failed to the point that methane gas accumulated to explosive levels.
State officials declined to answer many of those kinds of questions, saying that would be drawing conclusions that will more properly be given in their final report due out by the end of the month.
However, state investigators did say Friday that they did not change ventilation requirements at the Southmountain Mine because they were unaware of high gas levels found by federal inspectors months earlier.
The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration tested air in the mine and found a methane level of 0.25 percent in January 1992 and 0.59 percent in October. State law requires mine designations to be upgraded from nongassy to gassy when a 0.25 percent methane reading is registered.
"To me that was a red flag going off," said Max Kennedy, a member of the state task force overseeing the investigation of the Dec. 7 underground explosion.
But state Division of Mines Chief Harry Childress told Kennedy, a safety expert for the United Mine Workers, "This information was not exchanged."
Investigators showed a two-hour video of the damaged mine at the start of the task force's Friday session. Several scenes were of investigators going through the lunch box of one miner that contained two packs of Doral cigarettes and a lighter.
Thursday, state officials revealed that they had discovered a partially smoked cigarette in one mining machine and a heat-damaged lighter nearby.
But, without excusing the smoking, which is illegal underground, Oppegard and United Mine Workers representatives on the task force have complained that smoking is just one of many possible sources of the sparks that could have triggered the explosion.
The more crucial question, they say, is how deadly methane crept into the mine in explosive quantities.
Asked for his impressions at the end of the two-day hearing, Oppegard asked how the miners could record in a book kept in the mine office that they had found 9.9 percent methane in the mine last April and no mine inspector noticed it until after the explosion.
Different task force members questioned whether there was enough communication taking place between state and federal mine inspectors about their findings at a mine.
Family members wanted to know how the state could classify another mine only a few feet away in the same seam of coal as gassy and the Southmountain mine as nongassy. A change in state law this winter, however, brought Virginia into line with federal law that considers all mines gassy.
The Associated Press provided some information in this story.
Keywords:
FATALITY