Moving on Up and Leaving the Coal Mines Behind
Barry Beith / Human Factors
The Massey Upper Big Branch Coal Mine disaster which has dominated the news over the last two weeks raises a disturbing professional notion for me. In the late 1970s I was a student at the California State University of Northridge (CSUN) working with Dr. Mark Sanders trying to attain my Master’s degree in Applied Psychological Research/Human Factors.
My professor offered me a job working with him and his team on a project for the Bureau of Mines (BOM) which existed at that time to conduct health and safety related research in the U.S. mining industry. The team was designing and testing personal safety equipment for “low-seam” coal miners, e.g. helmet, kneepads, gloves. It proved to be a fun, if not thoroughly scary, adventure. It was also something else: it was true to the roots of human factors and ergonomics. It was work that was desperately needed and went to the foundations of human factors and ergonomics because it was intended to improve the quality of work life and safety for people who worked every day in dangerous, harsh conditions that threatened their lives in very real ways.
I am willing to bet that today most people, including human factors specialists and ergonomists don’t know much about “low-seam” coal mines. These are technically and officially mines in which the seams of coal are 48” or less in height. In fact, the seams can be as low as under 24” in height. In other words, the miners are prohibited from standing up straight. The conditions are also dark and dusty from coal and rock dust, gassy as evidenced in the Massey disaster with methane and carbon dioxide. While the days of using canaries as warnings of “bad air” may be past, “black damp” (conditions of low or no oxygen when a crew breaks through into an old uncharted mine) are not and can be a threat on a regular basis. Low-seam coal mining involves shift work, working in poorly lit environments with big, powerful, and very unforgiving pieces of equipment, hard physical labor, and the threat of pieces of roof weighing four pounds to four tons, coming down on your head unannounced.
For many miners it is the only work available in regions where poverty and unemployment are common. Miners are born and bred with some families having produced lineages that go back several generations. I talked with miners who knew no other life and didn’t care to do so. Miners whose injuries kept them “up top” as they expressed a deep desire to go back under ground with their friends and co-miners.
One of the eye-opening activities involved in the project for BOM with Dr. Sanders was the opportunity to visit several mines in Eastern Kentucky east of Lexington. I got to see what small mines and large production were like. I got to experience a “long-wall” operation where a miner maintained 100-250 ton jacks holding the roof (make that mountain overburden) up while the grinder carved the coal off the face of the seam and literally “ate” its way out of the mountain. Oh, the terror virtually unnoticed by the miner and horrific to me, was that the miner and I had to stay under the legs of the jacks for protection as huge chunks, i.e., boulders fell from the ceiling and the mountain “settled” behind us. Trust me, there was nothing “settling” about any of it.
I got to ride six miles once in the scoop of a shuttle, designed to be less that 24” in height. I rode with seepage dripping through the roof of the mine onto my face, scared to death that the ride might be my last. I was in one mine given the “favor” of watching a “three-waller” in my honor. This “three-waller” involved drilling six holes in a coal face, stuffing six sticks of dynamite into each hole with a blasting cap hooked by wire to an igniter worked by a older, i.e., survivor, miner in charge of blasting pulling a Red Flyer wagon full of dynamite and blasting caps and wire behind him as he crawled on his hands and knees. After setting off the 6 X 6 X 3 = 108 sticks of dynamite and the honor was complete, I couldn’t hear right for three days.
Working to improve the human factors of low-seam coal was hard. Miners don’t like change and mine owners and managers won’t pay for it if they can help it. It is not the case that miners are super-human fearless workers. They just learn to accept the “challenges”, overcome the fear, and do their jobs. n such respects they are similar to soldiers.
My point centers around the fact that unlike soldiers who receive research and design attention every day from agencies and companies throughout the country, miners do not. Oh, there are companies out there like J.H. Fletcher of Huntington, WV, who work hard to improve their equipment (roof bolters) for both safety and productivity. Otherwise, there are probably at most a hand-full of human factors researchers and designers and ergonomists in the U.S. today who have even been in a “low-seam” coal mine much less worked on projects to try and improve the miners’ lot in life.
The disaster at Massey’s mine reminded me of this. The mines are hard, dirty, scary, and not a place that attracts highly educated people out of universities. Miners can be distant and mine managers, shift foremen, and mine owners like Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey, could care less about improving safety in lieu of digging coal. So over the last thirty years, we just abandoned them. We left and found cleaner, easier things to do like design websites and equipment and process for other environments like automobiles, hospitals, and shopping malls. Don’t get me wrong, medical human factors and ergonomics work is important, saves lives and careers, and improves the quality of life. But we are drifting into an age when most of our efforts do not focus on those who need us most. Miners, farmers, commercial fishermen, factory workers, process plant workers, and construction workers are just some of the professions that need our attention. Unfortunately most of us grew weary of rolling that particular rock up those particular ramps… and over time we took our science, methods, technology, and perspective home and gave up on the dirty, dangerous industries, because we got dirty and they scared us.
And then Massey and 29 human lives lost at the Upper Big Branch Mine had to come along and remind us.
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nicholas farmer
Massey and 29 human lives lost at the Upper Big Branch Mine was a shameful thing wish there was something a single person could do.
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dave douty
that was a horrid accident i pray that they are all in gods hand.and i pray that the familys will not suffer. i am a miner myself and i know that would be a horrible way to go. i could not imagine the pain those men and their familys would have and are in.
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