By Mannix Porterfield
Register-Herald Reporter
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Editor’s Note: As three investigation teams continue their probe into the nation's worst mining disaster in four decades, editorial staff members from The Register-Herald and Bluefield Daily Telegraph, along with the executive editor for Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. (our parent company), have been working for the last three months to develop stories and photographs that will provide our readers with a deeper look into the Upper Big Branch tragedy. That work is featured in our newspaper today and tomorrow. It should also be noted that while Massey Energy did respond in writing to written questions that we posed to them, and those responses do appear in one of these stories, numerous verbal and written requests made to Massey officials to allow us to interview Massey CEO Don Blankenship went unanswered.
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Moments before all hell broke loose on an early spring day in West Virginia’s southern coalfields, Stanley “Goose” Stewart was waiting in a mine car when a dazzling light about 300 feet away captured his attention.
Never before had Stewart seen a spectacle so eerie as the reflection of the midday sun off that windshield. The brilliant light penetrated the Ellis portal of the Upper Big Branch mine. Stewart elbowed one of the 20 or so coal miners riding with him to make sure someone else shared his vision.
“It was the brightest light I ever saw,” said Stewart. “It was blinding.”
It was then that Stewart felt an unusual breeze. He turned to peer down the long corridor toward its source. The rush of air reminded him of wind that blows when a storm approaches.
Only those don’t come from inside the mine.
Miles away an explosion was tearing through Massey Energy’s Performance Coal Co. mine, a sprawling complex beneath the westernmost mountains of Raleigh County.
In a matter of seconds the breeze Stewart felt was a gale. The air thickened. He scrambled to get out of the mine car.
“I was trying to run, he said. “The footing there is bad. We had track rails there.”
The wind’s force grew until it “got like a hurricane,” he said, and he couldn’t see through the dust.
“I had to shut my eyes,” he said. “I told the fellows, ‘Take your time. You don’t need to fall.’ I was hurrying, but the wind was wanting to pick my feet up.”
Little did Stewart know that 29 of his fellow miners nearer the explosion were dead or dying, with two others injured. It was the deadliest mining disaster in the United States in four decades.
Rescuers would spend more than a week recovering the bodies of the dead. And months later, investigators would still be picking through the evidence, trying to figure out what had happened.
Upon reflection, Stewart says the peculiar light had been an omen — a sudden portent of the catastrophe that would envelop his mine brothers and forever change the lives of those who survived it.
Safety record questioned
Four months after the deadly explosion, the process of finding out what happened is far from complete. Inspectors couldn’t even get inside the mine until late June, once dangerous gases, lingering fires and water had subsided.
Three investigations are now under way — a federal probe led by the Mine Safety and Health Administration, a state inquiry headed by former MSHA assistant secretary J. Davitt McAteer and Massey Energy’s own probe.
West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin said in an interview he expects answers soon, perhaps even by the end of this month. “We’re going to get to the bottom of this,” he said.
What caused the blast, widely believed to be a build-up of methane gas and coal dust, is just one unanswered question. Massey Energy’s safety record is also under scrutiny.
Massey, the Richmond, Va.-based energy giant, operates 56 mines in West Virginia, Virginia and Kentucky. Nearly half are in Raleigh County.
The company, which has made a reputation of going to court and appealing safety citations against its mines, now finds itself at the defense table.
Massey faces two lawsuits filed by shareholders who claim it and its leaders, including CEO Don Blankenship, misrepresented their commitment to safety. The company also faces a wrongful death suit filed by a family of a miner that chose not to accept its settlement offer.
Manchin declined to discuss the company’s reputation.
“I want to wait until this investigation comes out,” he said. “But I can tell you this: I have some serious concerns when you have repeated serious violations. And it seems like everyone is always at odds. They’re at odds with the state, the feds or somebody, and that shouldn’t be.”
The Register-Herald has made several formal and informal requests for an interview with Blankenship since the explosion. He has not responded.
Massey spokesman Jeff Gilllenwater recently answered written questions about the ongoing investigations and the accusations against the company. He said Massey “continues to put safety first.”
No going back
In the aftermath of the explosion, memorials to the 29 fallen miners mushroomed throughout West Virginia. The state embraces its miners as local heroes who keep the country’s lights shining, its computers working and its steel mills in business.
Stewart saw that in himself during his 34-year mining career.
“When I’d go to work, I’d tell my kids, ‘I guess I’ll go help move the nation again,’” said Stewart. “I was kind of chuckling going out, but I really meant it. It was our job.”
Stewart, 53, has now decided his mining days are over. He spends time tending a garden and seeing a therapist in Charleston to talk about what happened inside the mine that day.
Reminders surround him. Adjacent to his property is the well-manicured Pine View Cemetery and the graves of two fellow miners — Gary Quarles and Jason Matthew Atkins.
Stewart said he saw much in the mines — severe injuries, dramatic rescues, deaths — and “always went back.”
Not this time.
“This one has got me,” he said. “I lost a lot of dear friends in this explosion. I couldn’t go back. I’m having a very hard time.”
That distance is one reason Stewart is willing to talk about Upper Big Branch. Many other miners contacted in the past four months declined to discuss what happened, at least publicly, for fear of recrimination or because they did not want to become targets of attention.
Stewart said he had plenty of reasons to worry for his safety in the 15 years he worked at Massey’s Performance Coal subsidiary.
The Upper Big Branch mine was notorious for high levels of methane, which is naturally released as coal is extracted. Air near the mining surface, in particular, was choked with gas and coal dust, both of which are explosive in high concentrations.
Stewart said he survived a blast in the mine in 1997, though no one was injured and mine bosses dismissed the incident as a fire, or an “ignition,” not an explosion.
Luckily that blast didn’t reach the area where coal was being extracted, and where the miners were working, he said.
“But it was a very, very scary day for me,” he said.
Stewart said Upper Big Branch miners knew the hazards they faced. One week before he died, Quarles complained to Stewart about the air quality.
While federal law requires constant monitoring to assure methane and coal dust don’t reach dangerous levels, Stewart said those rules were often winked at in pursuit of production.
Methane detectors occasionally sounded, indicating the gas was reaching perilous levels. Miners would shift curtains that guided airflow, Stewart said. Fans also operated in the mine.
But Stewart said the ventilation simply was inadequate.
Openly complaining was not a choice, however, especially when everyone was expected to toe the line as a “Member of Massey.”
“They had a thing they would say, ‘Everyone’s a member.’ So being a member, you just kept your mouth shut and went along with everything they wanted you to go along with,” he said. “If you would raise a stink about things, then you would be considered not a member.”
Massey miners also swallowed their concerns, Stewart said, because many are in debt and need their jobs. Fear of speaking up also helps Massey keep the union out of its mines, he says, though he believes an organized workforce could at least demand safer conditions.
“I feel like that’s the only thing that’s going to stop it,” he said. “If these men would quit being afraid and be united and stand up, they could enjoy the rights to safety without fear of repercussions.”
A year ago, Stewart said his concerns over safety reached a peak. He told his wife, Mindi, to hire a lawyer if he never came out of the mine alive. His death, he said, would undoubtedly be the result of a safety violation.
“There was always a push to get the numbers, at whatever cost,” he said. “We would try to do things the best we could, but if things weren’t exactly right, the pressure was on to load the coal.”
Living with an illusion
Stewart began telling his story a month after the blast, when the U.S. House Education and Labor Committee convened in the southern West Virginia coalfields for a hearing on mine safety.
He described elaborate protocols to spread the word when a mine inspector appeared onsite. Once alerted, crews were ordered to make hasty repairs, sufficient enough for the mine to pass muster.
Family members of several fallen miners shared similar stories, telling the committee what their loved ones had said about working in the mine.
Steve Morgan, a 29-year miner who lost his 21-year-old son, Adam, quoted his son as describing how a work crew was once told an inspector was nearby. They were ordered to apply rock dust to dampen levels of coal dust.
Morgan’s son wanted to stay in the mine long enough to earn his black hat, signifying his progress from a trainee to a regular miner, then look for work elsewhere.
Alice Peters told the committee her late son-in-law, Edward Dean Jones, expressed frequent concern about ventilation before he died in the blast.
“He often told me and his wife that he was afraid to go to work because the conditions at the mine were so bad,” she testified.
Stewart said he finds such conditions illogical from a business perspective. A coal operator who chooses to cut costs by disregarding safety, he said, will ultimately be forced to pay staggering sums when disaster strikes.
“I think they live under an illusion that nothing like this would happen,” he said. “They have gotten away with it for years. They just assume it’s not going to happen.”
