Committee
on Appropriations
Subcommittee
on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies
Hearing
on Sago Mine Disaster and Overview of Mine Safety
Statement
of Mr. Bennett K.
Hatfield, President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
International
Coal Group, Inc.
Mr. Chairman and members
of the Subcommittee, I am Ben Hatfield, President and Chief Executive Officer
of International Coal Group, Inc. (ICG).
By way of brief background, International Coal Group, Inc. is a leading
producer of coal with operations in
First, I want to extend
my deepest sympathies to the families whose loved ones were lost at the Sago
Mine. Our community will continue to
mourn the deaths of our friends and coworkers.
We also pray for the full and speedy recovery of Randal McCloy Jr.
Second, I commend the
heroic efforts made by many mine rescue teams from other companies and
volunteers who came forward during our communities’ time of need. The outpouring of support from the Buckhannon
area communities, churches, local businesses, civic organizations, and
emergency personnel has overwhelmingly demonstrated how
Our Company is working closely
with MSHA and the State of
Brief Summary of Events
I would like to briefly
summarize what we know about the events of January 2, 3 and 4, 2006. At approximately 6:00 AM on Monday morning, January 2, after their
travel route and worksites had been reported safe by certified safety
examiners, two production crews and mine support staff totaling 27 miners
entered the Mine. [See Attachment A for
a map of the Mine.] Each production crew needed to travel about two miles to reach the
two working sections (First Left and Second Left) of the Mine where they were
scheduled to work. The Second Left crew
entered the Mine on a rail manbus that departed roughly 10 minutes ahead of a
similar manbus carrying the First Left crew.
One of the certified safety examiners had remained underground and traveled
to his normal workstation. Therefore, a
total of 28 miners were underground.
At 6:31 AM, Sago mine management heard the audible alarm of the
mine monitoring system indicating the presence of carbon monoxide
underground. At about the same time, the
electrical power supply to the Sago Mine was disrupted. All of this occurred in the midst of a violent
storm with unusually strong lightning strikes.
Shortly thereafter, the supervisor of the First Left production crew
telephoned the dispatcher on the surface to report that his crew had just
experienced a very strong rush of air with substantial smoke and dust emanating
from deeper in the Mine. Mine management
directed the First Left supervisor to bring his crew out of the Mine through
one of the two primary escapeways. No
communication was received from the Second Left crew of miners. Repeated efforts by mine management and the
First Left crew to contact the Second Left crew, via mine phone and underground
walkie-talkie, were unsuccessful. So,
mine management immediately became concerned that they were in danger.
At 6:41 AM, Mine Superintendent Jeff Toler, whose uncle was one
of the missing miners, and three other mine supervisors headed underground to
investigate. After traveling about one
and a half miles by rail manbus, they encountered the First Left crew coming
out of the Mine on foot. The rail manbus
was given to the First Left crew to expedite their safe exit from the
Mine. The supervisor for the First Left
crew, whose brother was one of the missing miners, joined the mine management
team in an attempt to reach the Second Left crew located roughly 2,000 feet
deeper in the Mine. They quickly
gathered tools and ventilating materials and then proceeded toward the Second
Left section. This initial rescue effort
by the five-man management team continued for over two hours as the group
encountered thick, black smoke and attempted to redirect ventilating air to
open a route of access to the missing crew.
Repeated calls to the Second Left crew via mine phone received no
response. The rescuers became increasingly
concerned that a possible explosion could be ignited as they directed fresh air
toward the Second Left section.
Consequently, the mine management group exited the Mine at 9:45 AM.
Meanwhile on
the mine surface, at about 7:00 AM, company safety managers not already on site
were called and briefed on events at the mine.
Following various communications between those safety managers and mine
management on site regarding immediate emergency procedures required, we began
calling MSHA and State safety officials to report the accident at about 7:40 AM. Both MSHA and State safety officials were
reached between 7:56 and 8:28 AM, and began arriving on site soon thereafter. At 8:32 AM, MSHA inspector Jim Satterfield
orally implemented an emergency mine closure order (a “103k order”) prohibiting
further entry to the Mine. At about the
same time, State mine inspectors began monitoring the air quality at the Mine portal. High concentrations of carbon monoxide were
found, indicating significant risk of an active underground mine fire that
could ignite an explosion, so state and federal mine regulators on site
determined it was not safe for mine rescue teams to enter. This agonizing process of monitoring the
carbon monoxide and methane levels in the Mine air and having to wait and wait
for confirmation that it was safe to enter would continue throughout the
day.
In
anticipation that mine rescue teams were going to be allowed to enter the Mine
soon, the first call to the Barbour County Mine Rescue Team was made at 8:04
AM. That Team arrived on site at
approximately 10:40 AM, and waited for state and federal authorities to approve
their entry into the Mine. Other mine
rescue teams were also contacted, and continued to arrive at the Mine through
the course of the day, with eventual deployment of 13 to 15 mine rescue teams
by late afternoon on January 2.
After experts
from MSHA, the State of West Virginia,
and the Company agreed that an underground mine fire was no longer likely based
on the air monitoring results, the first mine rescue team entered the
Mine (carrying special breathing apparatus) at 5:51 PM. The search and rescue efforts continued
throughout January 2 and January 3. Progress
had to be careful and deliberate to protect the safety of rescuers, given that many
rescuers had fallen victim to secondary explosions in coal mine disasters of
years past. During the evening of
January 3, a rescue team found one miner’s body. Just before midnight, our remaining 12 missing
miners were found. As a result of the
extreme difficulties in communication hundreds of feet below the surface while wearing
special breathing apparatus, the now well-known miscommunication about the
number of survivors occurred. We, too,
rode that same emotional rollercoaster and suffered the inevitable pain when
the truth was learned.
We expect
that investigators will be able to safely get back into the Mine soon to determine
the cause of the accident.
Safety
at the Sago Mine
Even before
we completed the acquisition of the Sago Mine, on November 18, 2005, we assumed
management oversight through a consulting agreement that allowed us to begin
making safety improvements as of June 1, 2005. Since that time, our Company has worked
closely with federal and state regulators in an effort to make this Mine as
safe as possible. Specifically ICG has
voluntarily:
·
Rehabilitated two miles of
primary intake escapeway and more than doubled the amount of fresh air reaching
the working sections. This is the
escapeway used by the surviving crew.
·
Upgraded the rail system used
to move miners and supplies into and out of the Mine.
·
Invited MSHA’s Technical
Support Group on Incident Reduction to help implement a new program to
continually improve mine safety. We were
told that ICG was the first coal company to voluntarily work with MSHA under
the Agency’s Incident Reduction Program.
·
Required Sago Mine hourly
employees to receive eight hours of supplemental safety training during
September 2005, in addition to the extensive training already required under
the Mine Act. Then, during
October-December, we required our Northern West Virginia Region supervisors to receive
two days of supplemental training at the
·
Established a Performance Group
Initiative that gives every employee a forum for addressing any safety or
production concerns or suggestions, anonymously, if they so chose, and
addressed any points raised in monthly meetings.
These voluntary
initiatives helped us to dramatically reduce
the lost time injury rate at the Sago Mine by nearly 60% from the first half of
2005 to the second.
Sago’s employees are
well-trained, skilled coal miners who understand safety. Each employee is aware that if an unsafe
condition is identified, they are authorized to withdraw immediately from the
hazardous area and notify their supervisor of the danger.
MSHA data shows that:
·
Mining operations at the Sago
Mine more than doubled between 2004 and 2005, prompting MSHA to dramatically
increase – by 84% – its on-site inspection and enforcement presence.
·
Of the 208 citations, orders,
and safeguards issued in 2005, none involved an immediate risk of injury and
all but three had been fully corrected by January 2. The three remaining issues, which relate to roof
control, are being addressed by Sago in compliance with the Mine Act.
·
Only when MSHA completes its
investigation will we know the cause of the accident, but we do know that none
of the health and safety violations cited by MSHA at Sago Mine last year involved
immediate risk of injury and that the Mine has worked to correct all health and
safety problems in accordance with the requirements of the Mine Act.
The Mine Act also
authorized MSHA to shut down an operation that is unsafe, and MSHA’s trained mine
safety professionals, who were at the Mine
nearly every working day in the several months before the accident, would
certainly not have allowed the continued operation of the Sago Mine if they
believed it to be unsafe. In addition, as required by law, our
certified mine examiners inspect the Mine before and during every shift. They, too, are fully authorized to shut down any
part of the Mine they consider unsafe. While
the tragic events of January 2 confirm
that we must be ever vigilant on mine safety, the safety record at the Sago
Mine demonstrates that our management team aggressively focused on mine safety
and protecting our people.
The Future of Mine Safety
Although it’s far too
early to determine the cause of the tragedy and the extent to which it may have
been preventable, we intend to be a leader in the effort to identify and
develop safety technologies that will help to prevent future tragedies. We will work on our own, and with others in
the mining community, to improve technology, and we will continue to base our
business decisions on worker safety as the first and most crucial
consideration.
We expect that this
terrible series of events will further motivate the entire mining community to
identify and implement significant improvements in mine safety through
cooperation, information sharing, and improved technologies. For example, working with MSHA, we should
vigorously seek to advance the development of permissible wireless
communications and breathing apparatus technologies that could further improve the
coal industry’s underground mine rescue capabilities. Also, this experience highlighted critical
weaknesses in the design of MSHA’s V-2
robot that could likely be remedied with the technology now used by NASA in
space exploration. Once the actual cause
of the Sago explosion is known, there may be more specific measures that could
help prevent a recurrence.
We must learn lessons from this explosion that will better protect coal
miners. That is our Company’s commitment
to the families of the 12 miners who perished.