Did Sago Miners Get a 20 Minute Warning?

A flashing red evacuation signal that went off 20 minutes before the Sago mine collapse that killed 12 workers in January was ignored as malfunctioning, according to an affidavit filed in the mine investigation.  Had the procedures in place for a post-alarm evacuation been followed, miners’ lives may have been saved, according to a newspaper report.

The Charleston Gazette reported  Monday that dispatcher Bill Chisolm ignored a high carbon monoxide warning alarm 20 minutes before the mine blew up because he mistakenly thought the alarm had malfunctioned.  While it is not apparent that the rise in carbon monoxide had anything to do with the explosion, the toxic gas had reached a level that guidelines require bringing miners to safety, the paper reported.

Questions about the 6:10 a.m. alarm are adding to the mounting evidence of serious mine safety problems that caused West Virginia’s worst coal-mining disaster in nearly 40 years. Public hearings into the mine disaster began this week.

According to the Charleston Gazette newspaper’s staff writer Ken Ward Jr., when a carbon monoxide warning light flashed onto a dispatcher’s computer screen on January 2, under mine policy and federal rules, the rising toxic gas level should have triggered an evacuation. None was called.

Mine safety experts want to know whether the warning, if heeded, might have saved lives.

Tony Oppegard, a longtime mine safety advocate and former mine safety prosecutor in Kentucky, told the Charleston Gazette,  "There are 12 miners dead, and that deserves answers.  There were serious problems at this mine."

At Sago, several mine dispatchers testified that they received very limited training on how to respond to mine carbon monoxide alarms. Several dispatchers were unable to answer detailed questions investigators asked about logs from the mine’s carbon monoxide monitoring system, the paper reported.