U.S. mines safer than others
PHILADELPHIA (AP) – Two weeks before nine miners went through a three-day ordeal trapped in a flooded Pennsylvania mine, nine miners were carried out of a mine in China after eight days underground. While the rescue of the miners at Quecreek inspired the nation, the survival of the Chinese miners was even more of a rarity. China produces somewhat more coal than the United States, but with many times the fatalities.
Another mining danger spot internationally, Ukraine, produces much less coal but still has been rocked by repeated mine disasters, including one that killed 20 miners just three days after the Quecreek rescue.
Those countries are just now attempting to institute safety advances U.S. mines began tackling more than three decades ago, including strict ventilation, roof-support and miner-training requirements, a Penn State mine safety expert said.
“Health and safety regulations passed at the federal level in 1969 really revolutionized several aspects of underground coal mining in the United States,” said Raja Romney, a professor emeritus of mining engineering.
The Quecreek accident was blamed on a mapping problem that led the crew to breach an adjacent, water-filled abandoned mine they thought was 300 feet away. Problems behind the rash of mining disasters in China and Ukraine are more basic.
China is the world’s largest coal producer, churning out nearly 1.5 billion tons a year for its own power plants and industries and for export to Japan, which closed its last coal mine in January.
But China’s mines often lack such basic equipment as ventilation gear and explosions are frequent.
According to China’s state Coal Mine Safety Supervision Bureau, more than 3,500 miners have been killed in gas explosions, floods and other mining accidents this year, and 5,798 miners died last year, a death rate per million tons mined more than 100 times that in the United States and 20 times the worldwide rate.
The official Xinhua News Agency reports rapid-fire mine accidents: a July 15 gas explosion that killed five in a state-owned mine in northern China, a July 19 explosion that killed eight in Yunnan province, a July 24 explosion that killed 18 in Guizhou.
And many deaths may go unreported. State media and Chinese government officials reported the recovery of 18 bodies in May from a mine whose owner hid the body of one dead miner, destroyed employee records, and used paint to conceal burn marks at the mine entrance.
In contrast, the United States, second in world production at 1.1 billion tons, had 43 fatalities last year, and 17 though July 11 this year, the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration reported. One miner died each year in Pennsylvania.
Ukraine’s mines produce about a tenth as much coal – 109 million tons – but have one of the highest accident rates, blamed on poor maintenance and neglected safety since subsidies ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
An explosion July 31 killed 20 miners at a methane-plagued mine in the eastern Ukraine where accidents in 1999 and 2001 had killed 105 miners. A July 7 fire 2,198 feet underground in the Ukraina mine in the same region suffocated 35 miners.
Ukraine’s State Labor Safety Committee reported that 116 miners were killed the first six months of this year and more than 3,700 since 1991.
Romney, who has visited underground coal mines worldwide, said many Chinese and Ukrainian mines are at far greater depths than Quecreek’s 240 feet, and have thin, steeply sloping seams that produce more methane and multiply the engineering challenges involved in mining. China gets nearly 80 percent of its coal from underground mines, which tend to be more hazardous than surface mines, he added.
Of Pennsylvania’s 2000 total production of 78.3 million tons of coal, less than one-fourth came from underground mines, according to the latest breakdown available from the state Bureau of Deep Mine Safety.
Even underground mining in the United States tends to be done by more modern, less labor-intensive, methods, said Romney, who is on a nine-member commission Gov. Mark Schweiker named to examine mine safety and recommend changes to prevent a recurrence of the Quecreek accident.
Romney said longwall mining – in which a small crew under a protective steel canopy operates a huge machine that cuts away a lengthy section of a coal seam – can produce eight to 10 tons of coal per man-hour, compared with three to four tons with older techniques. About 60 longwall mines account for half the nation’s underground coal production, he said.
“The high productivity rates we are able to achieve have really helped ensure that not as many miners are exposed,” Romney said.
The Quecreek miners knew during their three-day ordeal that rescuers were using state-of-the-art techniques and equipment to try to reach them. Huddled around a pressurized stream of warm air from a six-inch hole precision-bored into the chamber, they could hear bigger drills biting through bedrock as high-capacity pumps stemmed the rising water.
Nine miners caught in a mudslide and flooding two weeks earlier in the Jianshe mine in China’s northwestern province of Shaanxi had more primitive resources.
They used an upturned coal cart, stones and coal chunks to try to wall off the mud and water, and searched out a hollow with water to drink and a ventilation shaft yielding some air.
Miner Li Liuwa was quoted by Xinhua as saying that on the eighth day, hearing the digging of rescuers as their last lamp battery faded, “Nine tough guys all broke down in tears.”
Ironically, an old-time practice nearly eliminated in the United States in the last half-century helped the Chinese miners. While most U.S. miners work in areas supported by strong patterns of roof bolts or steel longwall mining canopies, the Jianshe miners were able to strip bark from tree trunks shoring up the mine to stave off gnawing hunger.
“We still use timbers occasionally, but very, very few and far between,” Romney said. “By the 1950s we were getting into mechanized support.”
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On the Net:
U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration: http://www.msha.gov
Pennsylvania Bureau of Deep Mine Safety: http://www.dep.state.pa.us/dep/deputate
inres/dms/dms.htm