Death Destruction and Disaster in the American Coal Mining Industry (1999)

It was cold and dark Thursday morning during the first full week back at work after celebrating the New Year holiday. The temperature was a frigid 18 degrees Fahrenheit, but the wind made it feel more like eight degrees above zero. Just yesterday, the temperature was almost short-sleeve weather at a mild forty degrees. Alan was the blast-hole drill operator for the No. 1 Contractor, Inc. Stony Point Mine. The mine was a small one just west of Stony Point Road in Hopkins County, Kentucky. The Stony Point mine had been operational a scant five-months as the New Year rang in.

Alan, along with a dozen other miners worked the day shift. The mine has a total of twenty employees who work two nine-hour production shifts six days a week to extract the precious black ore from two different coal seams. The maintenance personnel work two ten-hour shifts repairing the equipment on a scheduled and as needed basis. Most surface mining operations operate two production shifts per day. Normally, the length of the shifts will often depend upon the sun and/or the weather conditions. During summer months when the days are long and the weather is good, the shifts sometime become twelve-hour shifts. That is, when the equipment can stand it.

During the regular surface mining sequence, the trees are removed from the surface. A bulldozer is then used to clear the surface and create a level drill bench. The blast-hole drill then drills deep holes down to the coal bed. The size of the holes and spacing between them is dependent upon the type and amount of material (called overburden) that is to be blasted. The holes are loaded with explosives that are detonated to break up the rock into manageable size pieces. Bulldozers and front-end loaders are used to load the overburden into rock-trucks that haul it away from the pit area. Once the coal is uncovered, it is broken up and loaded into coal trucks and hauled to a preparation plant facility.

At this operation, coal is mined from two different coal beds. They are named the #11 and the #13. The #13 seam is the top seam and the #11 is the bottom seam. There are about twenty feet of rock between the two coal beds. The top seam is always mined ahead of the bottom seam. This results in a twenty-foot bench between the coal seams.

The Stony Point mine uses a contract blasting crew supplied by the Mine Equipment and Mill Supply Company to perform all blasting work at the mine. In fact, a loaded shot had just been detonated yesterday. The mine also uses the Wright Trucking Company to haul the coal from the mine pit to the preparation plant. Specialty contractors are necessary at small operations in order to reduce the amount of equipment and workers to a cost-effective size. Coal production averages 1500 tons per day.

It’s dark at five O’clock AM when the day shift crew begins their day. Christopher Rickard the day-shift foreman assigns his workers their duties and begins with transporting various men to their equipment that is parked at the various work areas outside the pit area. The "Pit" is an area of a surface mine where overburden is actively being removed to uncover the coal seam allowing for the extraction of the coal.

Afterwards, he returned to the pit area to do a pre-shift examination. It is an examination that is required by both State and Federal mining regulations. To conduct the examination, a certified foreman must check all work areas for potential hazards. During the pre-shift exam, the high-wall must be examined for loose rocks or cracks caused such things a freezing and thawing. If hazards are detected, they must be taken care of (removed) prior to allowing any one to work in the area. To do proper high-wall inspections, it is necessary to check it from the face and also from atop of it.

Given the go-ahead, Jonathan Miller began to build a road across an area between the #13 and #11 coal seams that had been loaded with explosives and blasted yesterday. The road was necessary for Alan to tram his Robbins Model RRC-45S blast-hole drill to the drill bench atop the #11 coal seam.

Alan and Jonathan discussed, via CB radio, the best way to work the area. Alan trammed his drill to an area within about five feet of the high-wall while Jonathan began to clean up and move material from the area to be drilled.

Alan was finishing his first hole in the drill pattern at about six-thirty when rocks began to fall out of the high-wall above him. He called on the radio to Jonathan, who was a mere thirty-feet away saying, "I’m afixin to get covered up!" Jonathan Miller stopped his bulldozer and looked up just in time to see rocks falling from the high-wall just above the drill.

Surface mining equipment is often huge equipment. High-wall falls can and are often extremely large. Many a surface miner has been completely buried in his equipment by high-wall falls. This fall was a large one. It measured approximately fifty-feet high and sixty-feet wide. Tons and tons of material had fallen on top of the Robbins drill. Jonathan tried to alert Alan by radio, but there was no response--