‘We’re Coming After You’: Special Devices Allow Rescuers to Send Text Messages to Utah Miners
By Ken Ward Jr.
kward@wvgazette.com
Rescuers have been sending the six trapped Utah coal miners text messages with special devices that most of the coal industry has declined to deploy, a top federal official said.
"We told them, ‘Hey, we’re going to rescue you. We’re coming after you. Just stay calm,’" said Kevin Stricklin, administrator of coal mine safety for the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration.
In a Thursday interview, Stricklin said that Murray Energy’s Crandall Canyon Mine had equipped miners with one-way text messaging devices.
Crandall Canyon was equipped with redundant, hard-wired phone systems for miners underground to communicate with the surface. But Monday’s mine collapse apparently destroyed those systems.
Stricklin said that the mine also used Personal Emergency Devices, or PEDs, to send text messages to miners underground.
Unfortunately, Stricklin said, those devices allow only for messages to be sent to miners. Miners cannot reply.
"Naturally, we don’t know if they have gotten those messages," Stricklin said.
Generally, the PED system consists of a transmitter that uses ultra-low frequency electromagnetic fields to send communications from the surface through hundreds of feet of rock and earth.
Individual miners carry PED units integrated into the belt- mounted battery packs that they carry underground to power their cap lamps. The cap lamp flashes when a message is received from a personal computer on the surface. The miner reads a text message on a liquid-crystal display on top of his belt-mounted battery pack.
Almost 20 years ago, a company called Mine Site Technologies developed the system in Australia. The company came up with the devices after the deaths of 12 miners in a July 1986 explosion at the Moura No. 4 underground mine in Queensland.
In the United States, PEDs first received widespread attention after a November 1998 fire at the Willow Creek Mine in Carbon County, Utah, not far from Crandall Canyon.
When four miners from a longwall section at Willow Creek reported a fire, mine management activated the PED system to order an evacuation. The entire workforce was out of the mine within 45 minutes.
The following year, in July 2000, there was another fire at the Willow Creek Mine, now operated by RAG American Coal Company Inc. Again the PED system helped all miners evacuate safely.
After both incidents, MSHA officials praised the effectiveness of the PED system.
But the Bush administration refused to mandate the system when it was urged to do so after the September 2001 explosion that killed 13 miners at the Jim Walter Resources No. 5 Mine in Alabama.
"MSHA believes that the PED system is generally effective and encourages its use," MSHA officials said when they rewrote emergency response rules after the Jim Walter disaster. "However, since technology is constantly changing, newer systems that may be as, or more effective than the PED, may be developed."
Last year, mine safety advocates noted that the PED system could have saved lives at the Sago Mine disaster and the Aracoma Mine fire, both in West Virginia.
If the Sago miners had had these devices, miners trapped underground could have been told it was safe for them to just walk out after the Jan. 2 explosion.
If workers at the Aracoma Alma No. 1 Mine three weeks later had had text-messaging devices, they could have been warned sooner of a dangerous fire that killed two workers.
Last June, President Bush signed into law the MINER Act, the first broad re-write of mine safety laws since 1977.
The law requires all mine operators to install two-way wireless communications systems in underground mines, but not until mid- 2009.
To contact staff writer Ken Ward Jr., use e-mail or call 348- 1702.
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