State Approves Wireless Tracking Devices in Mines

By TIM HUBER

West Virginia has begun approving wireless communications and tracking systems for its 250 or so underground coal mines.

Letters approving mine-by-mine plans for installing communications and tracking gear started going out to mine operators Monday, said Ron Wooten, director of the state Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training.

Separately, the first airtight emergency shelter chamber has been shipped to an underground coal mine.

Both are considered significant developments in the state’s effort to bolster safety following the deaths of 12 men after a methane gas explosion at the Sago Mine in January 2006. West Virginia has forged ahead with communications, tracking and underground shelters at a far faster pace than much of the rest of the country, requiring both after Sago and a second high-profile fatal fire at the Aracoma Alma No. 1 Mine less than a month later.

Sweeping mine safety legislation passed by Congress last year requires federal regulators to study shelters, but doesn’t mandate them across the country. The legislation also gave the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration until mid-2009 to come up with wireless communications and tracking requirements for the nation’s 650 underground coal mines.

West Virginia, meanwhile, should have wireless communications and tracking gear installed statewide by the end of third-quarter 2008, Wooten said.

"Some (mines) have already started," he said. "We should have all of them approved by the end of this month."

Recent coal mining tragedies, including Sago and last summer’s Crandall Canyon mine collapse in Utah, have underscored the importance of being able to pinpoint the location of workers underground. In both cases, rescuers struggled to locate missing miners.

Yet mines still rely on manual tracking methods such as magnets on boards and pencil and paper to keep a rough handle on where employees are.

"You might see a mine map with stickpins in it, something like that," Wooten said. "That will all change."

Another big change is the addition of emergency shelters. The airtight chambers are designed to provide at least four days of oxygen and other life support for miners who can’t escape after a fire, explosion or other underground disaster.

The first shelter was scheduled to arrive at International Coal Group’s Imperial Mine near Buckhannon on Tuesday. Though shelter chambers are required only in West Virginia and Illinois, Scott Depot-based ICG has ordered shelters for all its underground mines in Kentucky as well.

ICG says it expects to have shelters capable of holding 20 to 35 miners at all its underground mines by early next year.

The shelter going to the Imperial Mine is an inflatable model from Allentown, Pa.-based ChemBio Shelter and Lester-based A.L. Lee Corp.

Originally published by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS.

(c) 2007 Charleston Daily Mail. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.