Inquiries, Lawsuit Cite Negligence at Utah Mine

PRICE, Utah -- In Carbon County, named for the coal that has been pulled from the surrounding mountains for more than a century, it was clear almost immediately what went wrong at the Crandall Canyon mine last August. The shaky horizontal shaft collapsed on six men, killing them and three more who died trying to rescue them.

"The way they were mining was very dangerous," said Elmer Vigil, 59, retired from the railroad that carts the bituminous coal down the long, downhill grade.

But just how dangerous has become clear only as findings emerge from an array of investigations into the disaster.

A Senate committee last month cited memos from mining engineers expressly warning against sending men into Crandall to pull down the pillars of coal that were supporting the roof of the mine. The mine's previous owners had abandoned such an undertaking after removing as much coal as they judged could be taken out safely.

On March 31, the Labor Department's inspector general released an audit that found the federal agency responsible for mine safety was "negligent" in approving the plans the new owner filed when he resumed mining in Crandall Canyon, and was sloppy in recording inspections.

Those conclusions, along with evidence that mine owners put dangerous additional strains on the pillars by shaving coal from the mine floor, inform a lawsuit filed in Salt Lake City last week by the families of several of the dead miners.

Mining experts already have said that the Crandall owners were taking a dangerous risk by pulling down one crucial "barrier pillar," even though the roof had come down in a nearby part of the mine after miners tried the same thing the previous March.

"There's an awful lot of information already known that led to an awful lot of bad conduct that led to a very dangerous situation," said Ed Havas, an attorney for the six families named in the suit. "This was predictable, and it was avoidable."

The suit, filed in state district court, seeks unspecified damages against the mine's co-owners, Murray Energy Corp. of Ohio and Intermountain Power Agency. It also names the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which Havas said was a primary client of Intermountain, and Agapito Associates.

Agapito is the Colorado consulting company that prepared the plan to pull out pillars wedged deeper underground, and therefore subjected to more massive pressure from the mountain overhead, than federal regulators had ever permitted to be taken out.

"We grieve for the families and hold no ill-will toward them," Murray Energy attorney Kevin Anderson said in a statement. He said the suit contained "numerous false statements of fact" about "a horribly tragic and completely unforeseen event."

But in Carbon County, hard feelings have focused sharply on Robert Murray, the blustering chief executive who took center stage when the mine collapsed on Aug. 6, trapping the six miners. Murray was ridiculed in the days that followed for blaming the disaster on an earthquake, and his local image in the months since has descended into a stark caricature of villainy.

"It's terrible to say, but I hope they can hang Mr. Murray high and dry," said Lucile Erickson, whose son Don remains entombed in the mine. "Right from the beginning, he just kept hollering, 'Production, production, production, that's all that matters.' We knew right off what kind of guy he was."

"Miners aren't just numbers," she said, adding in a cracking voice: "I hurt so much."

The mine was sealed after rescue efforts were abandoned when a second collapse crushed a rescue party burrowing through the slag, killing three more men and injuring six. But Murray remains an industrialist of significance in Utah's coal belt, where he has interests in several other mines.

One, known both as the Aberdeen and the Tower mine, was closed down late last month after federal regulators levied fines totaling $420,000 for "flagrant" safety violations. The Labor Department's Mine Safety and Health Administration cited Murray's company for allowing dangerous accumulations of coal dust and other combustible material in what the company calls the deepest working coal mine in the country. Historians say most mine disasters in Utah have been caused by explosions rather than collapses.

Most of the miners from the shuttered mine were transferred to West Ridge, yet another of Murray's mines. But a federal official said last week that West Ridge is also being cited for a "flagrant" violation that the agency is still processing.

"They got a lot of mines that are going downhill," Kim Moosman said in the chilly noon sunshine outside the Kmart in Price. She said that 41 miners laid off at the Tower mine were joining a migration from east-central Utah to coal mines near Rock Springs, Wyo., but that not everyone was able to move.

"Without all them jobs, and people put their houses up for sale at once, that makes it hard, too," Moosman said before spitting on the asphalt. "There's nobody here to buy."

High demand for coal, which provides half of the nation's electricity, has pushed up its price about 50 percent over five years ago. That increased incentives for mine owners to order dangerous "retreat mining." The process involves sending miners in to recover coal left behind to hold up the roof when the mountain was first mined, letting the roof collapse behind them as they retreat.

But the disaster at Crandall led to coal production in Utah dropping last year "due to unexpected mine closures," according to the governor's Office of Planning and Budget.

"I'm not a miner," Stirling Wilson, 82, said in the parking lot outside the Albertsons supermarket. "I was when I was 14 or 15. But I decided it was too dangerous, so I joined the Marine Corps.

"This was in 1943."