Let’s talk: Mine communications systems

At least one Coal Tattoo reader was excited to learn that the seven miners trapped in a flooded West Virginia coal mine over the weekend were able to talk to their families until enough water was pumped out that they could be rescued. (See previous posts here, here and here)

Was this a sign that post-Sago Mine Disaster reforms had a modern, wireless communications system in place at Alpha Natural Resources’ Mountaineer Alma 1 Mine?

Not so much, it turns out.

Jama Jarrett, spokeswoman for the West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training, said the Mountaineer Alma Mine had in place a system from GAI-TRONICS.

“It is a two-way communications system that utilizes a dispatcher who patches calls to a hard line and vice versa,” Jarrett said in an e-mail message. “This mine does not have its communication tracking system in place yet.”

One mine safety expert told me that this system amounted to the old-style “pager phones” in place at many underground mines. It was hardly sophisticated, wireless equipment that would withstand an explosion or fire.

The successful rescue of these 7 miners is still great news, a bright spot in the terrible flooding that has hit parts of West Virginia’s southern coalfields, especially Mingo County. And it’s great that the old phone system worked so the miners and their families could talk each other through this scary situation.

But, unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to have been an indication that the outdated communications equipment used for years in most underground coal mines has been replaced.

West Virginia and its Gov. Joe Manchin, led the way with a tough mine rescue law passed in the wake of Sago and the Aracoma Mine fire. Mine operators here were required by July 2007 to submit plans for new wireless communications and tracking systems. But the state law did not set a firm deadline for when mine operators must have these systems actually installed and working.

The federal MINER Act tried to set such a deadline, of June 2009, for such systems in all mines nationwide. But Congress also provided mine operators an out, with this language:

Where such plan sets forth the reasons such provisions can not be adopted, the plan shall also set forth the operator’s alternative means of compliance. Such alternative shall approximate, as closely as possible, the degree of functional utility and safety protection provided by the wireless two-way medium and tracking system referred to in this subpart.

And on Jan. 16 — four days before George W. Bush left office — the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration issued a policy that implemented that out for the coal industry.

I wonder if anyone in Congress is going to hold hearings anytime soon on what the new leaders at MSHA planned to do to speed up implementation of this and other MINER Act goals … well, I guess that assumes that the Obama administration puts someone new in charge of MSHA anytime soon.