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6 February, 2006
A US District Court issued an injunction against maverick mining company International Coal Group (ICG), 26 January, to prevent the firm from blocking United Mine Workers’ (UMWA) union investigators from the Sago Mine in the state of West Virginia. Twelve miners were killed inside the mine on 2 January.
UMWA does not represent Sago’s 150 miners, but many workers there requested that UMWA take part in the follow-up probe, an action both lawful and binding under the US Mine Safety & Health Act (MSHA). ICG prevented UMWA investigators from entering the jobsite, using security guards to deny access. ICG quickly appealed the injunction obtained by the agency that oversees MSHA, but an appellate court in Richmond, Virginia, denied reviewing it.
The US company now must allow UMWA to investigate IGC and Sago’s horrid and deadly safety practices. With energy demand and high coal prices driving the reopening of closed coal shafts in the US East, other coal mine fatalities have occurred in West Virginia in the wake of Sago.
On 19 January, a conveyer belt fire at Aracoma Coal’s Alma Mine in Melville caught fire, trapping and killing two. On 31 January, two separate deaths occurred; one when a wall collapsed, killing a miner at Long Branch Energy’s Wharton mine, the other when an operator on a bulldozer at Massey Energy’s Black Castle surface mine struck a gas pipeline. The total of 16 mine deaths in West Virginia since 2 January exceeds the entire 2005 death count, which was three.
In contrast, and also on 31 January, some 1,000 miles west, 90 miners and UMWA members at Freemen United Coal Co., near Gilead, Illinois, were evacuated after high levels of carbon monoxide were detected by UMWA-operated equipment inside the mine. UMWA teams safely brought the trapped miners to the surface, and the mine will remain closed pending an investigation.