Miner Killed in Collapse

Harlan County, KY (WorkersCompensation.com) – Rescue crews stopped looking for a miner thought to be trapped in a Kentucky coal mine last week when they found his body deep inside the mine. 

James D. Brown, 33, was killed when the roof of the D-29 Darby Fork mine collapsed. Rescuers had work well into the evening Monday, hoping to bring Brown out alive. 

Brown, a 13-year mine veteran, operated a machine that installs bolts in the roof of the mine to stabilize it. He was about 14,000 feet underground (more than two and a half miles) on Sunday when the roof collapsed, officials with the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet said. All mining operations were shut down, cabinet officials said, while crews searched for him.

 “We are heartbroken at the news,“ said Gov. Andy Beshear. “Please join me in expressing my deep condolences to his family, friends and community.” 

The mine collapse is being investigated by the Kentucky Department for Natural Resources, Division of Mine Safety. Mine operations will be suspended during their investigation, officials said. 

“Our thoughts and prayers go out to Mr. Brown’s family,” Kentucky Energy and Environment Secretary Rebecca Goodman said. “Our trained mine safety specialists are in the process of examining how this happened and how it could have been prevented.”

The mine is owned by Inmet Mining LLC, of Knoxville. The company purchased the mine in Holmes Mill, Kentucky, in Harlan County, along with several other mines in Eastern Kentucky from a company called Blackjewel, which had gone bankrupt in the summer of 2019. 

Kentucky has seen one coal-mining fatality in 2021, and has already had one in 2022. In January 2022, a Virginia man was killed when a tree fell on their pickup truck at a surface mine in Bell County, Kentucky. Another man was injured in that same accident. 

According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Mining Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), the U.S. has seen 12 mining fatalities as of March 22, 2022. Between 2018 and 2021, there were 121 mine fatalities, 37 of them in 2021, MSHA said. Powered haulage accounts for the majority of fatalities, followed closely by machinery. 

Experts said 2020 marked the sixth straight year the annual total was below 30, and represented a record in terms of coal mining deaths at just 5 – an historic low, MSHA reported. There were about 63,612 coal miners in the U.S. in 2020. 

It’s a marked contrast to just 100 years ago. In the 1920s, coal mining deaths numbered over 2,000. In 1910, the country saw a record 2,821 coal mining deaths. Since then, coal mining death have dropped. In the 1930, they dropped to 2,003, and continued falling. In the 1950s, there were under 700 coal mining deaths, which dropped to just 66 in 2000. In 2016, the county saw its first single digit death toll for coal mining at 8. 

The agency credited a diverse educational campaign as a factor in the decrease in miner deaths related to powered haulage. Powered haulage fatalities represented 21 percent of the overall total of 2020 deaths. In 2017 and 2018, powered haulage accounted for about half of all fatalities. 

An app developed by the agency, shows the real cost of mining fatalities. The Fatalities Cost in Mining web application, developed by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Mining Program, estimates the societal cost of an individual fatality. Using the characteristics of the miner, the mining program, the injury and the mine, the cost is developed considering the one-time direct cost, as well as the annual series of indirect costs beginning at the victim’s age at death and ending at their retirement age of 67. The direct cost is an estimate of medical costs associated with the fatal injury, the program said, while the indirect cost estimates the victim’s wage value (wage and benefits adjusted for growth) and the victim’s household production value (time spent performing household tasks and providing care to household members). 

For instance, in a 2017 mine fatality, where a timber rolled off of a rib, striking and killing a miner, the accident was estimated to have a total cost of more than $2 million.

Share This Article: