Former Official Calls for More Mine Safety

Deadly mine explosions in West Virginia and Utah show the need for stricter enforcement of mine safety rules, a former federal official said.

Over the last six years, the federal government has been cutting back on mine safety enforcement, said former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration, J. David McAteer in an address Saturday at The Darkest Month Coal Mining Symposium in Pittsburgh, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported.

The result has been disasters like the January 2006 explosion that killed 12 miners in Sago, W.Va., and the Crandall Canyon Mine implosion in Utah that killed six miners and three rescuers in August, McAteer said.

The symposium name refers to December 1907, when the Darr Mine explosion in Pennsylvania killed 239 miners and another in Monongah, W.Va., killed 361 miners.