Officials in West Virginia plan to tackle mine safety

CHARLESTON, W.Va. – In death, 14 West Virginia coal miners have achieved something that just a month ago seemed an unlikely goal: Labor, industry and lawmakers are united in demanding that a dangerous subterranean occupation be made safer.

One day after the bodies of two missing miners were found in Aracoma Coal’s Alma No. 1 mine at Melville, Gov. Joe Manchin was crafting legislation that he wanted lawmakers to approve by tonight.

“I wish we would have done it sooner,” Manchin told the Associated Press on Sunday. “I know we would have saved lives in these last two tragedies.”

West Virginia’s congressional delegation and the National Mining Association and the United Mine Workers of America said Sunday that they, too, want a major overhaul of state and federal mine safety laws.

The bodies of Don I. Bragg, 33, and Ellery “Elvis” Hatfield, 47, were found Saturday, two days after a conveyor belt caught fire inside the Alma mine in southern West Virginia. Their deaths came just weeks after a Jan. 2 mine explosion that led to the deaths of 12 other miners exposed to carbon monoxide inside the Sago Mine in the northern part of the state.

UMW president Cecil Roberts said Congress and state legislatures must take steps to ensure existing regulations are strictly enforced.

“We must also develop new initiatives that will give every miner a vastly improved chance to walk out of a mine after an accident, alive and well and safe in the arms of their loved ones,” he said.

A Senate Appropriations subcommittee scheduled hearings on mine safety today, and Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., who chairs the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee, which oversees mine safety, also planned a hearing.