An Illinois coal mine in Saline County has been placed on notice by the U.S. Department of Labor for the second time in two years over health and safety concerns.
Willow Lake Mine, an underground mine operated by Peabody Energy, employs about 483 people. Peabody is the largest coal producer in the Midwest, shipping about 30 million tons of coal annually from Illinois and Indiana mines to electricity generators and industrial customers throughout the Midwest.
DOL’s Mine Safety and Health Administration said Wednesday that the Peabody mine, along with seven other mines in Kentucky, Nevada, Virginia and West Virginia had troublesome compliance records. A review of self-reported safety data at the Illinois coal mine uncovered a repetitive pattern of serious violations, according to a letter sent to the coal mine operator Wednesday.
“In April, MSHA briefed stakeholders on a new and transparent online tool that allows mine operators to regularly monitor their compliance and injury records; and make adjustments to improve health and safety accordingly,” said Joseph A. Main, assistant secretary of labor for mine safety and health. “Unfortunately, some operators either did not use this tool or did not response with effective improvements.”
Beth Sutton, a spokeswoman for the Willow Lake mine, said DOL’s notice is based on outdated data. She said current data shows that the mine has improved its safety record.
“The mine has taken aggressive actions to improve safety, improving the mine’s incident rate 60 percent year-to-date through October,” she said. “This rate is more than 30 percent better than the underground industry average based on the most recent statistics available. Willow Lake will continue working with MSHA to drive continuous safety improvement.”
Video:Man survives a near-drowning in sunflower seeds in silo.
Over the past three decades, more than 680 Kansans have been killed on the job. Nearly one in 10 died while working at a grain elevator. The 60 grain elevator deaths include three painters who fell 125 feet from the top of an elevator in Jetmore in 1982.
They include four members of a cleaning crew that was in the DeBruce Grain elevator south of Wichita when it exploded in 1998.
Forty-eight of the workers who died in elevators were doing jobs classified by OSHA as “grain and field bean” work. According to OSHA, it’s the most dangerous job you can have if you work in Kansas.
The DeBruce explosion, which killed seven and injured 10, made national headlines and resulted in a substantial OSHA fine.
But all of the other grain and field bean workers who have died since 1980 were killed in single-fatality accidents. Nearly half died when they were engulfed by grain.
“It’s just one of the most dangerous places in the world to work,” said Ron Hayes, who became a workplace safety advocate after his 19-year-old son, Patrick, was buried by 60 tons of corn while working in a Florida grain bin in 1993.
“You’ve got all these electrical contacts,” Hayes said. “You’ve got all these gears and chains and belts.
“And then there’s the dust. When you go into these bins and grain elevators, sometimes you can’t even see. It’s a white-out almost.”
Hayes said he began researching workplace safety after becoming frustrated with his inability to get information about his son’s death. He said he now thinks most people hired by grain elevators don’t realize the dangers of the job they are taking.
“Call 100 people and ask them, ‘Do you think corn or soybeans would be dangerous to work with?’ ” he said. “They’re going to say no. But it’s very, very hazardous.”
The second-most-dangerous job in Kansas is “sewer, pipeline, and power line construction” worker, OSHA records show. Workers in that category accounted for 32 workplace deaths from 1980 through 2009.
The third- and fourth-most-dangerous jobs are “highway and street construction,” with 28 deaths, and “roofing, siding, and sheet metal” work, with 25.
A review of Kansas’ grain elevator deaths shows that the seven men who died at DeBruce were the only workers killed by an explosion.
OSHA records show that 21 of the workers were buried under grain, five others were crushed by equipment, five died in falls and three were electrocuted.
Hayes said when the coroner couldn’t answer detailed questions about his son’s death, he began to research what happens when a person is covered by grain.
Death comes from asphyxia, he said, when the pressure of the grain prevents the victim’s diaphragm from contracting. Most workers, he said, die with their hands reaching upward.
“It took them five hours to dig him out,” he said of the recovery of his son’s body. “His ears were packed with corn dust. His nose, his eyes, were packed with corn dust. It was just packed solid. They had to dig it out.”
OSHA’s involvement
A serious workplace accident — one involving a death or the hospitalization of three or more workers — automatically triggers an investigation by OSHA.
In all but nine of the investigations that followed grain elevator deaths, the OSHA inspection turned up one or more violations of workplace safety standards. When violations were found, the fines in the single-fatality deaths ranged from $83 to $77,800.
The $650,000 fine that was assessed after the DeBruce blast was the second-largest in state history.
The largest was a $1.5 million fine assessed to National Beef Packing Co. of Liberal after the deaths of three workers who were overcome by toxic fumes in a blood-collection tank.
OSHA can levy fines of up to $7,000 for each violation. If the violation is willful — if management was aware of the problem and did not correct it — the company can be fined up to $70,000 per violation.
OSHA blamed the DeBruce explosion on a buildup of dust throughout the elevator and a general lack of maintenance. Investigators said they found piles of dust up to 7 inches deep.
OSHA inspections
In Kansas, OSHA conducts an average of 800 inspections a year.
About 3 percent are triggered by serious accidents, while 4 percent are “referrals” that are launched after a credible source alerts OSHA to a potential problem.
OSHA records show that 5 percent of its inspections are follow-ups, and 18 percent are triggered by complaints from current or former workers.
The bulk of inspections are “programmed,” which means they are designed to target specific hazards.
Since 1980, OSHA has conducted 340 grain elevator inspections in Kansas. Nearly 40 percent occurred during the three years following the DeBruce explosion.
The elevator inspections included 46 that were prompted by serious accidents, 35 that arose from worker complaints, and 31 that were follow-ups from previous inspections. Most were programmed inspections.
Terry Kohler, Garden Plain Co-op general manger, said OSHA plays a key role in making sure that workplaces are safe.
“Sometimes we squirm and worry when we hear that word ‘OSHA,’ but they’re also there to help us,” he said.
Joe Schauf, general manager of Nickerson Co-op, agreed.
“They have a job to do, too,” he said. “It’s good they come around to check on some of these things. For the most part, co-ops all work well with them. OSHA is going to tell you when you screw up.”
Hayes, whose son died, said he has developed a love-hate relationship with OSHA over the years. He said he appreciates the fact that OSHA pressures companies to keep workplaces safe. But he said most OSHA fines are small, and he wishes the agency would focus more on being proactive rather than reactive.
Hayes said that after his son’s death, he found OSHA to be of little help. Today, he said, OSHA is more user-friendly to relatives of accident victims. For example, he said, the agency no longer charges grieving survivors for copies of reports about the deaths of their loved ones.
Hayes said he thinks American companies generally are getting better at investing in safety training and equipment.
“You’ve got a lot of good companies out there that want to do the right thing,” he said. “Then you’ve got some companies that just don’t give a rat’s patoot.”
Nationwide, he said, “We’ll have 16 people die today on the job. There’ll be 16 families that have to go to the morgue and identify a husband or son or brother or child.
“Every day that happens. And that doesn’t even count the families of the ones that have been hurt.”
Contributing: Rick Plumlee of The Eagle Reach Hurst Laviana at 316-268-6499 or hlaviana@wichitaeagle.com.
Federal inspectors have found more than 60 serious safety violations at Massey Energy operations since the explosion that killed 29 miners, adding to fallout from the disaster that includes a wrongful death lawsuit by one of the men’s widows.
Inspectors visited more than 30 underground Massey coal mines in West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia after the April 5 blast, according to records from the Mine Safety and Health Administration. The agency has tentatively blamed preventable accumulations of explosive methane gas and coal dust for the worst U.S. coal mining disaster since 1970.
The miner’s widow accuses the company of a history of safety violations that amount to negligence in the first wrongful death lawsuit over the explosion, which she filed Thursday.
Investigators were reviewing records from the site of the blast and waiting for dangerous gases to be ventilated before going underground at the Upper Big Branch mine. It will probably be another week until investigators can safely go in, MSHA Administrator Kevin Stricklin said.
To tally violations at other Massey sites, The Associated Press checked inspection records for all of the company’s approximately 70 underground coal mines in the U.S. from April 5 through Thursday. Mines operated by other companies also were inspected during the same period.
Stricklin said the MSHA hasn’t been disproportionately targeting Massey since the blast, nor has it increased the pace of inspections. He did say inspectors have responded to hazard complaints at two Massey mines.
“We’re just going about our regular business,” Stricklin said. “I didn’t give any instructions to go and look at Massey mines.”
Still, Stricklin sharply criticized the company for violations found in the last 10 days.
The violations include conveyor belt problems at Massey’s Aracoma Alma No. 1 mine in West Virginia, where a belt fire killed two men in 2006.
“I’m very disappointed,” Stricklin said. “You would think that personnel associated with Massey would be really more careful.”
The company’s Solid Energy No. 1 mine in Kentucky was cited for allowing coal dust to pile up on three occasions since the explosion.
“That’s very troubling,” Stricklin said. “Pitiful.”
Mines are required to keep methane well below explosive levels with sophisticated ventilation systems and control coal dust by keeping it from piling up and covering it with noncombustible material.
Stricklin has told district managers to look more closely at all mine ventilation systems and the buildup of methane, and to move rock dusting surveys to the front end of the quarterly inspection.
Stricklin said he was embarrassed the industry wasn’t able to prevent the Upper Big Branch tragedy.
“An explosion of this magnitude basically sends us back 40 years. All explosions are preventable,” he said.
Massey is facing its first wrongful death lawsuit over the blast, filed by Marlene Griffith in Raleigh County Circuit Court. The lawsuit also targets Performance Coal, the Massey subsidiary that operated the underground mine.
The lawsuit claims Massey’s handling of working conditions at the mine, plus its history of safety violations, amounted to aggravated conduct that rises above the level of ordinary negligence.
Griffith and her husband, William Griffith, were planning to celebrate their 33rd wedding anniversary April 30, the lawsuit said.
Mark Moreland, a Charleston lawyer representing Griffith, said that William Griffith was concerned about safety in the mine and had avoided serious injury during a rock fall there a week before his death.
“He told his wife on more than one occasion that if anything happened to him in that mine, that she needed to get a lawyer,” Moreland said Friday.
Massey did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday on the lawsuits or the violations.
The West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training started its own safety sweep of the state’s nearly 200 underground mines Friday. Administrator Terry Farley declined to say whether the agency is targeting Massey.
MSHA issued the recent citations while conducting spot checks and routine inspections at the Massey operations.
Agency records show the problems were not universal; several Massey mines weren’t cited at all after the inspections.
Among those that came up clean is Massey’s Tiller No. 1 mine in Virginia. Federal inspectors had warned Massey to improve safety at the mine last fall or face heightened enforcement for a pattern of serious violations.
President Barack Obama has ordered a sweeping review of coal mines with poor safety records and called for stronger mining laws.
Mines in West Virginia were asked to stop producing coal Friday and concentrate on safety in memory of the Upper Big Branch victims.
OSHA has cited Fleetpride Inc. in Willowbrook, Ill., with $61,500 in proposed penalties for alleged serious and repeat violations of federal workplace safety standards.
As a result of a February inspection, the agency cited the nationwide truck parts distributor with three alleged serious violations for damaged, inoperable emergency lighting; exit signs not illuminated; and a damaged fall protection lanyard not taken out of service. Additionally, the company received four repeat violations alleging improper personal protective equipment, no hazard assessment certification, no personal protective equipment training certification, and no cover on an electrical box.
“These types of violations show the disregard the company has for the safety and welfare of its employees,” said OSHA Area Director Kathy Webb in North Aurora, Ill. “Those who ignore safe practices and OSHA regulations are inviting tragedy into the lives of their workers.”
The company, which is headquartered in The Woodlands, Texas, has 15 business days from receipt of its citations and penalties to comply, request an informal conference with OSHA’s area director, or contest the findings before the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.
OSHA has notified officials at the Evansville Regional Airport (Evansville, Ill.) that a recent inspection has found four serious and four repeat safety and health violations in its air traffic control tower.
The agency began its safety and health inspection in August 2009 as a planned inspection under its Airport Air Traffic Control Tower Monitoring Program. Serious violations found include failing to post a diagram of emergency egress routes, conduct annual fire drills, and properly identify doors as “Not an Exit,” as well as an improperly grounded electrical outlet. Repeat violations include failing to test the stair pressurization system, unobstructed exit routes, and inadequate or missing emergency action plans and fire prevention plans.
“Workers in air traffic control towers should be assured they can escape quickly and efficiently if disaster strikes,” said OSHA Area Director Ken Gilbert in Indianapolis, Ind. “All of us want to see working men and women go home safe at the end of every work shift.”
Gilbert noted that if this employer were in the private sector, based on the violations found, total penalties assessed would amount to $125,000. Under the law, federal agencies are cited without penalties.
Public air traffic control towers are operated under the control of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Aviation Administration. Since October 2007, OSHA has inspected 57 FAA tower sites nationwide, with 45 of those inspections resulting in notices issued. Those notices have included 128 violations, more than three-fourths of which were categorized as “serious.”
Federal regulators have cited Gulf Chemical & Metallurgical Corp. in Freeport, alleging it exposed workers to hazardous airborne contaminants.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration proposed penalties of $50,400 after an October inspection found 16 alleged serious violations of workplace safety and health standards.
OSHA alleged this week that Gulf Chemical & Metallurgical failed to adequately protect workers from airborne exposure and electrical hazards, and failed to train employees on chemical hazards, forklift attachments and the use of respirators.
“This employer exposed its workers to unhealthful working conditions,” said Dean McDaniel, OSHA’s regional administrator in Dallas.
Nancy Wollam, vice president of public relations and government affairs for Gulf Chemical & Metallurgical, said the company plans to contest each of the allegations and has requested an informal conference with OSHA.
“Employee health and safety is our top priority and we work diligently every day to ensure that our work environment is as safe as possible,” Wollam said.
