At first glance, the public release of hundreds of pages of witness statements from the state-federal Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster investigation appears to provide information focused only on the ill-fated search for survivors of that terrible explosion in April 2010.
Updated: See, for example, Transcripts Reveal Details, Drama, Troubles Of Mine Disaster Rescue Effort, a new blog post from NPR’s Howard Berkes pointing out some of what he’s found as he reads the documents.
But continuing to dig through the documents, it becomes clear there are other things there as well, including some testimony from both government inspectors and from Massey Energy employees that advances our understanding of safety conditions at the mine prior to the disaster.
For example, read the testimony of Mark Bolen, a Massey Energy mine rescue team member who also — like many Massey rescuers — served on a crew that performed special safety audits at Massey operations.
Bolen told investigators that he took part in a safety audit at Upper Big Branch sometime in 2010 prior to the explosion. And, he testified that the audit wrote up the mine for having a set of manual airlock doors underground, contrary to a Massey policy that required such doors to open and close automatically. According to his transcript, Bolen told investigators:
I remember discussing them, because as part of our company policy or guidelines, all our doors on our track are to be automatic. and those doors were manual doors, and we had discussed getting that corrected.
Now, remember that we’ve heard before about the airlock doors at Upper Big Branch, and questions about them are amount the major unanswered issues in the investigation.
Greg Wagner, deputy assistant secretary in charge of MSHA, criticized Massey’s frequent use of airlock doors instead of other ventilation controls at Upper Big Branch in this leaked memo last year:
… Instead of using overcasts, which allow for continual airflow at locations where miners are required to cross an aircourse, Massey used double doors that, if left open inappropriately, will cause air to stop reaching the working sections of the mine. Doors are easier and cheaper to construct than overcasts, but they can completely rob the working sections of air when they are left opened.
And, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette had focused some of its coverage of Upper Big Branch previously on the question of whether the airlock doors had anything to do with the explosion:
Investigators now are looking at a series of doors set up inside the mine that appear to have been used to shift airflow and whether those shifts required advance approval.
Upper Big Branch was dotted with doors, including double sets designed to provide air locks that would prevent a shift in the flow of air, as well as others marked as regulators — doors specifically designed to allow a modification in the flow of air.
So, what do we learn from Bolen’s testimony on the airlock doors? He explains that the doors in question:
… Were not automated doors … I mean, they were not set up to be automated. They were manual doors that you had to get out and open. They did not have the jacks and there was no electrical provision, you know, there to make them automatic. So they would have had to have changed them out.
The explanation I got that the doors had been ordered. The appropriate doors had been ordered.
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