THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT:

Coal Mining and Accidents in Northern West Virginia

By Mark Reutter
Posted 1/24/06

The deaths of 12 miners at Sago Mine – found suffocated from carbon monoxide fumes after their families and Gov. Joe Manchin of West Virginia had been led to believe that they were still alive – produced an outpouring of shock at the statements made by the CEO (Ben Hatfield) and majority owner (Wilbur L. Ross) of International Coal Group.

What was initially described as an “act of God,” with Hatfield citing lightning as the probable cause of the explosion and both men piously asking Americans to pray for the miners, took a fresh twist when the extent and seriousness of the safety violations at Sago Mine were found – an accident rate almost three times above the industry’s average; repeated mine cave-ins, including the collapse of a 70-foot-long roof section at the end of November; the sloppy handling of coal dust that may have led to the explosion; and an apparently weak seal in a mined-out area where the explosion occurred.

The reported laxity of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Mine Safety and Health Administration (which cited Sago Mine for 208 safety violations last year, but never saw fit to shut the facility) and the push by Ross’ company to double coal production at the facility will apparently be among the subjects of a thorough study promised by Gov. Manchin and also of hearings in Washington, if the hearings are not blocked by the Republican majority in Congress.

To win public goodwill, International Coal Group has established the $2 million Sago Mine Fund to help the widows and children of the dead miners. ICG Chairman Ross announced that he would match additional contributions made to the fund (so far, those contributions include donations by Donald Trump and Massey Energy Co., owner of Alma No. 1 Mine in Melville, W.Va., where two miners were killed on January 19). At the current rate of contributions, Ross might have to expend 0.002 percent of his reported net worth to handle the bad publicity arising from the Sago accident.

This article steps back to give readers some historical background and statistical information on mine accidents in the state. It also explains mine operations at Sago, based on industry reports and financial disclosure reports.

For most of the 20th century, West Virginia produced more bituminous coal than any other state. In fact, for eight decades, one fourth or more of the entire production of the U.S. was mined in this state. (Today, Wyoming is the largest coal-producing state.)

The coal found in Appalachia was formed some 300 million years ago when giant plants covered terrestrial Earth, and North America was located along the equator due to the forces of continental drift. Today’s West Virginia consists of the eroded plateaus of a once vast and humid coastal swamp. Carbon accumulations from dead plants and insects eventually formed the coal beds.

West Virginia’s coal is generally dull in appearance as opposed to shiny and vitreous anthracite coal found in northeast Pennsylvania. It has high heating value (as measured by the British thermal units or Btu’s), low ash content, and low-to-medium sulfur. Coal in the state is divided into two districts, the northern fields and the southern fields. Sago Mine is near the south end of the northern fields, which extend north to the Pennsylvania state line and east to Cumberland, Md.

The first mine in the northern fields was opened in 1750 on Georges Creek, Md. Development was slow at first, but expanded rapidly after the opening of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad between Baltimore and present-day Wheeling, W.Va. The first marketed West Virginia coal was produced in 1853 at a mine in Fairmont, W.Va.

The coal mined here is known as the Pittsburgh bed. Occupying an area of at least 2,150 square miles, the bed originally held more than 13 billion tons of coal – or double the tonnage of any other coal bed in the state. Pittsburgh coal consists of at least three seams of coal, separated by shale or so-called inferior coal. The first seam is generally thin and soft, thus miners go beneath it to drill out the lower “benches” of the bed, which typically produce between five and seven feet of good coal, separated by thin seams of shale. In addition to the Pittsburgh bed, the northern fields hold other beds of high-Btu coal, including the Upper and Lower Freeport and the Upper, Middle, and Lower Kittanning. (FYI: The Sago Mine extracts coal from the Middle Kittanning bed.) (1)

While southern West Virginia also contains rich coal beds, most famously the Pocahontas seam, these sources of coal were not developed on a large scale until the late 1880s or later, because of the difficulty of building railroad lines into the remote territory. Thus, during America’s rapid industrialization after the Civil War, the northern fields became the epicenter of Appalachian coal extraction.

Northern West Virginia coal tends not only to be high-Btu but “gassy,” meaning it gives off large quantities of methane (natural gas) while mined. While not poisonous, methane is inflammable, and when mixed with as little as five percent air, becomes highly explosive. What’s more, during the process of extracting coal, part of the coal seam is reduced to a fine dust, which can be just as explosive as methane mixed with air. If the coal dust is allowed to accumulate, the smallest spark from a match or a moving machine part in the mine may blow enough of dust into the air to form an explosive cloud. Unless blocked by seals or other means, the cloud can almost instantaneously penetrate every passageway until the whole mine is devastated by explosions.

A precaution against coat dust explosions includes adding powdered limestone to the dust as it accumulates. But as with so many other aspects of underground mining, spreading limestone can increase costs while slowing down production. (Coal dust, inhaled by miners, also causes debilitating anthracosis or “black lung” disease.)

Roof falls, which figured prominently in the recent history of Sago Mine, are generally caused by unstable seams. Soft shale, located between the coal seams, is subject to sudden collapse from the vibration of machinery or the seepage of water from surface or underground streams. (2)

The first of many terrible mine accidents in the northern fields happened on January 21, 1886, when 39 miners were killed in an explosion at Mt. Brook Mine at Newburg, a hamlet in Preston County about 30 miles east of Fairmont. Mine explosions increased in frequency and lethalness over the next 20 years, capped by a blast at Monongah Mine that killed 361 men on December 6, 1907.

That explosion, the worst in the nation’s history, occurred at a mining complex owned by Fairmont Coal Co., a subsidiary of Consolidation Coal Co., which operates today as Consol Energy. Overall, the death rate in West Virginia’s coalfields surpassed that in all other mining states between 1890 and 1912, and exceeded the rate in European coal mines by a factor of five. (3)

Because of the state’s rugged geography, mine companies controlled virtually every aspect of the isolated mine towns. Calls for better safety by organizers for the United Mine Workers (UMW) were dismissed as “insurrectionary” rhetoric, and membership in the union was forbidden on pain of dismissal and eviction from the company house.

“Medieval West Virginia! With its tent colonies on the bleak hills. With its grim men and women. When I get to the other side, I shall tell God Almighty about West Virginia,” wrote Mary Harris “Mother” Jones about her unsuccessful attempts to organize the state’s coalfields. In 1902, she and other UMW organizers were found guilty in federal court in Clarksburg, W.Va., of illegally conspiring to injure the complainant, a Baltimore financier connected with Consolidation Coal. Mother Jones fled the state permanently the following year after she was shot at and a suspicious fire was started in an unoccupied room next to her hotel quarters. (4)

As labor agitation and repression grew in the 1920s, so did the size and scope of coal operations. Regional companies were gobbled up by steel companies, which sought out Pittsburgh coal to make coke, the first step in producing steel. Bethlehem Steel Corp. purchased 46,000 acres of coal-bearing lands around Fairmont and Elkins, W.Va., from the Elkins-Davis interests for its coke ovens at Sparrows Point, Md., and other major producers developed mining subsidiaries in the state. (5)

Mine disasters continued apace. An explosion at Wheeling Steel Corp.’s Benwood Mine killed 119 men in 1924. This was followed by an explosion at Bethlehem Steel’s Barrackville Mine that killed 33 men in 1925. The next year an explosion at nearby Jamison Mine killed 19 men. New England Fuel Co.’s Federal Mine blew up at Everettville in 1927, claiming another 97 miners. Still another 56 men perished in 1942 when Christopher No. 3 Mine blew at Osage near Morgantown.

Public shock from the explosion that killed 78 men in 1968 at Consol No. 9 mine at Farmington was finally credited with the passage of the 1969 Federal Mine Safety and Health Act, the first comprehensive law setting safety standards in U.S. coal mines. Accidents and deaths have notably dropped since then. (6)

By the 1970s, many of the northern fields had been played out. While there was still plenty of coal left in the hills, much of it consisted of thinning seams that, along with the presence of rider seams, made the deposits both expensive and dangerous to mine. After decades of overwork, miners were no longer needed in the Fairmont fields. Intense poverty swept through the region. It was in this context that a former Consol engineer named John L. Faltis established himself as the coal prophet of the northern fields.

Glib, energetic, and generally well liked, Faltis proclaimed that the district could revive under new technology and labor practices. Faltis formed Anker Coal as a vehicle to buy up mines being off-loaded by steel and other companies. One of his properties was the mine at Osage, scene of the 1942 explosion. Another was Sentinel Mine, a longwall operation opened in 1975 by Republic Steel near Philippi, W.Va. The mine never achieved its targeted production levels and had been sold to a contractor who removed the longwall equipment. In 1987, Anker formed Philippi Development, Inc., to buy and operate the abandoned mine.

Anker converted the longwall operation to the “room-and-pillar” method, a less-expensive process that uses continuous miners (machines that cut through the face of the coal seams) for extraction. All labor was non-union. Faltis told Coal Age that the mine was the “most efficient in northern West Virginia outside of the large Pittsburgh seam mines.” Most of Sentinel’s coal was sold to New England Power, and the mine also supplied Baltimore Gas & Electric’s Crane (Md.) plant. Faltis reported in 1995 that Anker was growing at an annual rate of 20 percent and was “striving to become the largest producer of low-sulfur coal in northern Appalachia.” (7)

Infused with fresh investors’ money, Faltis moved down the Buchhannon River to Sago, picking up an idled Pittston Co. coal-preparation plant on the CSX (ex-B&O) railroad. Known as the Sawmill Run/Spruce Fork properties, the Upshur County hills became the new center of Faltis’ ambition. He caught the eye of Wilbur L. Ross, managing director of the Rothschild Recovery Fund. In September 1997, the Rothschild fund purchased $32.7 million worth of Anker bonds to finance expansion. (8)

On October 12, 1997, Faltis was killed in a helicopter accident. The crash took place while the mine operator was photographing the Spruce Fork site. Two months later, a methane ignition caused a major explosion at Oak Mountain Mine, in Shelby County, Ala., wiping out much of Anker’s $10 million investment at the facility. (9)

Following a financially disastrous 1998, Ross began to take control of Anker in September 1999 by swapping Anker bonds for common stock and advancing cash to help the company pay interest on its loans. This was the same year that Sago Mine (then called Spruce No. 2) was opened.

Meanwhile, Anker itself went through bankruptcy proceedings in 2002-03, and, for a period, Sago Mine was closed. However, with coal prices rising rapidly since 2004, Sago Mine had taken on added importance to Ross, who has held majority interest in the Anker group since early 2001.

Here is ICG’s description of the properties:

“The Spruce Fork Division currently consists of two active underground mines: Spruce No. 1 and Sago located in Upshur County…. Nearly all of the reserves in the Spruce Fork Division are owned by ICG. The Spruce No. 1 Mine opened in 1997 and we anticipate that its reserves will be depleted sometime during the third quarter of 2005. The Sago mine, which was originally opened in 1999 as a contract mine, closed in 2002, and then reopened as a captive operation in the first quarter of 2004. Sago is expected to reach full production by the fourth quarter of 2005.

“Both operations utilize the room-and-pillar mining method with continuous miners and shuttle cars for coal extraction. All of the coal extracted from these mines is processed through the nearby Sawmill Run preparation plan where coal is then primarily shipped by CSX rail, although some coal is trucked to local industrial customers.

“We have projected that the Spruce Fork Division will produce approximately 1.7 million tons of coal in 2005. The Sago No. 3 mine, scheduled for production in 2007, is a replacement for the Spruce No. 1 Mine. The reserves at Spruce Fork have characteristics that make it marketable to both steam and metallurgical coal customers.” (10)

The latest chapter of mine accidents in West Virginia took place at 6:31 a.m. on January 2, 2006, when an explosion two miles from the mine portal trapped 12 miners and let deadly carbon monoxide fumes enter into the passageway. The deaths at Sago Mine were the highest number in the state since Consol No. 9 Mine detonated in 1968, killing 78 men (including Gov. Manchin’s uncle) and compelling Congress to respond to the carnage with mine-safety regulations.

NOTES

1. Oscar L. Haught, Coal and Coal Mining in West Virginia (Morgantown, W.Va., 1964), pp. 5-11. “Plant Fossils of West Virginia,” www.geocraft.com/wvfossils/.
2. Ibid., pp. 32-33.
3. Elliott J. Gorn, Mother Jones. The Most Dangerous Woman in America (New York, 2001), p. 90.
4. Ibid., pp. 95-98.
5. Mark Reutter, Making Steel (Champaign, Ill., 2004), p. 161.
6. “W.Va. Mine Disasters, 1884 to Present [2005],” www.wvminesafety.org/disaster.htm.
7. Coal Age, April 3, 1995,
8. Anker Coal Group, Form 10-K Report to the Securities and Exchange Commission, 1997.
9. Anker Coal, 10-K Reports, 1997 and 1998.
10. International Coal Group, Amendment No. 5 to Form S-1 Report to the SEC (November 9, 2005), p. 131.