Report: Massey workers told to disarm safety monitor in doomed mine

An electrician at a Massey coal mine was instructed to dismantle a methane sensor two months before an explosion there killed 29 workers, NPR News reported Thursday. The safety sensor — wired to shut down a coal harvesting machine when methane levels hit a certain threshold — was doing just that, prompting a mine supervisor to order the device disabled to keep the project moving, witnesses to the Feb. 13 incident told NPR.

"Everybody was getting mad because the continuous miner kept shutting off because there was methane," Ricky Lee Campbell, a Massey worker who witnessed the episode at the Upper Big Branch mine, told NPR. "So they shut the section down and the electrician got into the methane detector box and rewired it so we could continue to run coal."

The accusation is similar to that from Chuck Nelson, a former Massey miner, who sat down with this reporter for a long interview a few weeks after the deadly blast at the Upper Big Branch.

"They had sniffers — what they called sniffers — and whenever you hit a pocket of methane [above a certain level], it shut the power off the [coal harvester]. … But I’ve seen these sniffers bridged out," said Nelson, now a volunteer with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition.

The NPR report arrives two days after the House Education and Labor Committee met to examine a Democratic proposal designed to protect miners by reining in companies that prioritize coal production above worker safety.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), expands whistleblower protections for mine workers and makes it easier for federal regulators to shutter projects that habitually violate safety rules.

Miller's legislation is a direct response to the explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine, a Massey-owned project in the coal fields south of Charleston, W.Va. Though the cause of the disaster remains unknown, mine safety experts say the sheer size of the blast strongly suggests the buildup of methane, combined with accumulations of combustible coal dust.

To combat those conditions, mine operators are required to maintain sophisticated ventilation systems. A month before the blast, however, federal regulators had cited the UBB operator for, among other things, posing an improper plan to ventilate the mine of methane and dust; allowing the accumulation of combustible materials; failing to control dust; and failing to maintain escapeways.

Massey, for its part, has acknowledged that the methane sensor was disabled. But the company denies that it was done to keep the machine running amid dangerous conditions.

"The methane monitor was bypassed in order to move the miner from the area that did not have roof support to a safer area for repair," the company said in a statement issued Wednesday.

"But witnesses," NPR reported, "insist that the mining machine continued to cut rock."

Meanwhile, House GOP leaders are opposing Miller's mine-safety bill, arguing that it oversteps its stated goal of protecting miners. Many Republicans want to learn the cause of the UBB blast before installing preventive measures.

Davitt McAteer, a mine-safety expert investigating the disaster, told reporters Wednesday that difficult conditions in the mine will delay that probe for months.

"Our best estimate," he said, "is that we're looking at the end of the year for any kind of report."