Mine Safety Not Easy to Ensure

By The Intelligencer
Six miners have died in on-the-job accidents in West Virginia, but not of the variety that makes big headlines.

Most people think about coal mine safety only when they see news stories about catastrophic occurrences such as explosions in mines. But none of the fatalities in Mountain State mines this year involved such situations. That points out the difficulty of addressing mine safety — and the need to make efforts to protect miners a multifaceted campaign.

On Sunday, a miner was killed in an accident in Wharton, W.Va., when a large rock moved, pinning him to a piece of machinery. State Miners’ Health, Safety and Training officials said the boulder did not fall from the mine roof, but already had been dislodged. Something made it move, killing the miner.

Fatalities earlier this year included one in which a miner was caught in a piece of machinery and another in which a machine’s “torque shaft came loose” and killed a man. Three of the fatalities involved roof falls.

Of course, catastrophic accidents with the potential to kill miners in large numbers need to be a priority for mine safety agencies, coal companies and miners themselves. But, again, most accidents in mines are those involving one or two miners, with even those near the accident sites not in jeopardy.

Both state and federal mine safety agencies are fully aware of the many ways in which miners can be hurt or killed while working. The many government regulations on virtually every type of activity in mines are proof of that attention to detail.

We encourage the agencies, along with coal companies and miners themselves, to not allow that attention to the many dangers of a mine environment to suffer from a focus on more catastrophic types of accidents. And we encourage legislators at both the state and federal levels to ensure that the agencies have enough funding to address all dangers to miners.