At 5:30 a.m. on November 20, 1968, Consolidation Coal Company’s No. 9 mine near Farmington, W.Va., erupted with an explosion felt 12 miles away and a plume of flame and smoke that obscured vision. Ninety-nine miners were underground when the mine exploded. Twenty-one escaped; 78 died.
Rescue attempts failed and Consol soon sealed the mine with concrete to deprive the fires of oxygen. Ten years later, Pittsburgh-based Consol abandoned all attempts to recover the remains of 19 miners. Their bodies were never recovered from the mine.
The catastrophe, amid its toll of death, destruction, and family and community devastation, ultimately had a positive outcome. It led to the passage in 1969 of the first federal law establishing coal mine safety as a government priority, with muscular enforcement authority.
Earlier, in 1951, just before Christmas, an even greater disaster in southern Illinois at the Orient No. 2 mine near West Frankfort claimed the lives of 119 men. That disaster led to the first federal mine safety law in 1952, fought relentlessly by the national coal industry.
Congress passed the law, but it was largely toothless. Signing the bill, President Harry Truman said, “The legislation contains several exemptions to the safety provisions particularly with regard to replacement of dangerous electrical equipment and faulty ventilation systems which have been the causes of most recent major disasters. I am advised that these exemptions were provided to avoid any economic impact on the coal mining industry, but they are so worded that the unsafe conditions and practices could continue for years before the mines would be required to comply with the law.”
Truman’s objections were well founded. Underground coal mining fatalities barely budged between 1953 and 1968, averaging 339 per year despite declining mining employment, according to federal statistics.
Galvanized by the Farmington disaster, Congress in 1969, led largely by West Virginia Rep. Ken Heckler, a crusading liberal Democrat, passed a new mine safety law with teeth. President Richard Nixon reluctantly signed the bill into law, fearing the cost in compensation claims, and a new regime in underground coal mine safety began. Congress strengthened the federal regulatory regime in 1977 and 2006.
The results of the federal regulations, despite some industry grousing (and egregious criminal acts by Don Blankenship, then head of Massey Energy, related to the 2010 Upper Big Branch disaster which killed 29 miners) has been positive. Underground mining fatalities haven’t touched triple digits since 1985, according to government statistics. Fatalities were 7 in 2016.
The Mine Safety and Health Administration, a Labor Department agency that administers the mining rules, noted, “In 2009, there were 18 recorded coal mining deaths, a record low number. Sadly, coal mining fatalities dramatically increased to 48 in 2010, with the tragedy at the Upper Big Branch Mine claiming 29 lives in addition to the 19 other coal miners killed that year. In 2011, 21 coal miners were killed in accidents. 2012 saw 19 coal miners killed in accidents.” The numbers have decline since then.
Today, underground coal mining isn’t among the top 10 most dangerous jobs in America, based on fatalities per 100,000 workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Logging leads the list (135.9), followed by fishing workers (86), aircraft pilots and flight engineers (55.5), roofers (48.6), trash and recycling collectors (34.1), and down to grounds maintenance workers (17.4) in 10th place.
The dramatic decrease in coal mine fatalities is not entirely a result of federal regulation (and enforcement of the rules). The industry has changed, with the rise of safer mining equipment and technologies, such as long wall mining, better safety attitudes among miners and coal companies, and a general detent in the historic tensions between industry and the government.
Underground coal mining remains a perilous profession. Miners face danger at every turn, often working in nasty conditions that include diminished visibility and deafening sound, large machines working at speeds that can quickly maim or kill, and unstable geology. But today’s underground miners are vastly safer than they were 50 years ago when Consol’s No. 9 mine exploded. In large part, that’s a result of federal law and successful regulation.
— Kennedy Maize