Methane ignition sends 3 miners to hospital
BLACKSVILLE, W.Va. – Three coal miners were hospitalized with injuries after a pocket of methane gas ignited in a ball of flame Thursday morning at CONSOL Energy’s Blacksville No. 2 Mine. The flare-up occurred between 9 and 9:30 a.m., when workers using a welding torch to dissemble equipment being pulled out of a mined area ignited a pocket of the flammable gas, according to Joe Cerenzia, public relations manager for CONSOL.
Two miners were taken by ambulance to Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown, W.Va., and a third miner was flown to West Penn Hospital in Pittsburgh. The names of the injured miners were not available.
Several others were treated for smoke inhalation, Cerenzia said.
“They were doing welding and other activities, and for an undetermined reason, a buildup of methane gas ignited and caused a very brief ignition, a ball of flame,” Cerenzia said. “It sparked and burned itself out very quickly.”
Cerenzia likened the ignition the ball of flames to what happens when a gas grill has a buildup of propane. It quickly dissipated, and no fire departments were called to the scene. There was no major fire or explosion, and the incident was over “as quickly as you could imagine,” Cerenzia said.
No information about the three injured miners was available as of press time, other than that they were working in the area where the ignition occurred and sustained non-life threatening “burns or burning-type injuries,” and were in stable condition, Cerenzia said.
The miners were removing equipment from a longwall section that already had been mined when the accident occurred. The mine was not evacuated and workers still were underground Thursday afternoon in other areas of the mine.
The area where the ignition took place was restricted by the U.S. Labor Department’s Mine Safety and Health Administration, which is investigating the accident. The area also was de-energized as a precaution, Cerenzia said.
According to MSHA spokesman Dirk Fillpot, the agency was notified of the fire around 9:45 a.m. and investigators were sent to the mine. The MSHA, which develops and enforces safety and health rules applying to all U.S. mines, must complete its investigation before that area of mine can reopen.
“It is typical for us to issue a ‘K’ order when accidents occur,” Fillpot said, referring to the order that essentially puts the mine or a portion of the mine under MSHA control.
According the MSHA Web site, accidents that are immediately reportable to the MSHA include, among others, a death at a mine; an injury at a mine which has a reasonable potential to cause death; an unplanned inundation of a mine by a liquid or gas and an unplanned ignition or explosion of gas or dust.
The Blacksville No. 2 Mine was the 13th largest coal mine in the country in 2004, according to the National Mine Association’s figures, when it produced 5.7 million tons of coal. It produced 5.3 million tons of coal in 2005.
The mine’s portal entrance is located in Pennsylvania, but it is considered a West Virginia mine. It produces coal from the Pittsburgh 8 Seam using one longwall system and three continuous mining machines.
CONSOL, the largest U.S. producer of coal from underground mines, operates seven of the top 20 largest underground coal mines in the United States in terms of production. The company has nearly 2,000 employees in Pennsylvania and more than 2,500 employees in West Virginia.