U.S. mine official focuses on safety

WASHINGTON — Dave Lauriski's eyes cloud with tears when he talks about Utah's 1984 Wilberg Mine fire that killed 27 coal miners, including several of his lifelong friends. But he says it changed him — and helped him lead national efforts that now have made U.S. mines safer than any time in history.

"It (Wilberg) strengthened my resolve to work harder in making sure that we could send people home to their families after every shift," Lauriski says. Since 2001, he has been the nation's top mine safety official as the assistant labor secretary who directs the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA).

When President Bush asked Lauriski to leave 31 years of mining in Utah to come to Washington, Lauriski found that U.S. mining deaths had begun to rise after years of a slowing decline. He set goals to reverse that and to change the way his agency operates — wanting it not just to be a cop but also a teacher, coach and innovator.

"I believe in goals. I believe that goals should be set that are measurable and meaningful, and that make you stretch," he said. So the high ones

he set for U.S. mining were to reduce fatalities by 15 percent a year, and cut injuries by 50 percent over a five-year period.

"To date, fatalities since we walked in the door in 2001 are down 33 percent. Injury rates are down over 20 percent," he says proudly.

In 2003, U.S. mines also had the fewest deaths — 55 — since records began back in 1910, during an era when thousands were dying every year. Hundreds still died annually just a few decades ago. So with the new record, "I think this industry has a lot to be proud of," Lauriski says.

That achievement has roots in the Wilberg fire, and even earlier in Utah for Lauriski, a third-generation coal miner born in East Carbon City and raised in Utah's coal camps.

He was a miner himself briefly, when he was a junior at the College of Eastern Utah. But when hard, six-day work weeks left little social life, "I decided that school was more important than making money" in the mines, he says. But near the end of studies at Utah State University, he was offered and took a job as a mine safety official.

After years of working in such jobs, he took a similar one with Emery Mining in 1984 — seven months before the Wilberg fire, at one of five mines that Emery operated. "I had just started doing some work with the mine manager to develop a new (safety) program at the time of the fire," Lauriski says.