Mine safety symposium recalls Crandall Canyon questions

Nearly one year ago, the collapse at the Crandall Canyon Mine near Huntington left people demanding to know what caused it and who, if anyone, might be to blame.

A Mine Safety and Health Administration report was expected to shed light on those questions Monday during a mine safety symposium in Salt Lake City, but the results will have to wait until Thursday.

Richard Stickler said Monday during an interview that MSHA certainly had a responsibility for approving the Crandall Canyon Mine plan and inspecting operations there, but that MSHA officials could only physically be there about 5 percent of the time while it was being mined.

"There's no way we can cover everything," said Stickler, acting assistant secretary of labor for mine safety and health. He said there were "obviously" some things missed that should have been caught. "We could not have been there to catch everything."

Six miners died in the original collapse last August — they are still inside the closed mine — and three more perished in another collapse trying to rescue the trapped workers.

Stickler would not elaborate, as some have, on the blame game. He said Monday that MSHA made a commitment to not talk about results of the investigation into the Crandall Canyon collapse until victims' families had been talked to first.

Some say mine co-owner Robert Murray, CEO of Murray Energy, is to blame for the collapse. Others include MSHA in their accusations. Murray is named in a lawsuit filed last April by the victims' families.

"MSHA's finger is in this pie, too," said Mike Dalpiaz, international vice president for the United Mine Workers of America.

Last spring the Labor Department issued its own report, saying MSHA was negligent leading up to the Crandall Canyon collapse. As for the cause, University of Utah seismologists last month said a mine collapse set off a seismic event that registered as a 3.9 magnitude shock during a 50-acre cave-in. Initially, Murray insisted an earthquake caused the collapse.

Dalpiaz, who is based in Price, referred to how MSHA agreed to the type of work that was happening inside the mine at the time. He described the process of pulling, or dismantling, pillars of coal that help stabilize a mine ceiling.

"You can pull pillars anywhere, and it's a safe way of mining," Dalpiaz said.