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No.9: The 1968 Farmington Mine Disaster ReviewNo. 9 is another work with a strong local connection. It also gives me yet another lesson in thinking before criticizing.
West Virginia produces a significant portion of coal for the United States. It has done so for about 120 years. Likely, that will also be the case for the next 50 years.
West Virginia history is checkered with mass casualty mine accidents. (Many more miners have suffered injury or death from individual accidents, and that's a shame - both that they suffer and that it takes a lot of simultaneous deaths for anybody to notice industrial dangers.)
One of the "big dogs" of the coal business in West Virginia is Consolidation Coal Company (pronounced "con-SOL"). One of Consol's larger mines of the 20th century was No. 9 at Farmington, Marion County, which is about 7 miles from my home.
On 20 November 1968, 99 men were working the cat-eye (midnight) shift. At 5:30 AM, the west side of the mine exploded. In ensuing days, there were more explosions. 21 miners escaped. 78 died. Of those, 19 still remain in the now sealed mine.
I know several the people from whom author Stewart got her information and many of the players on both sides of the litigation. And so, I was briefly prepared to hold Stewart's biased conclusions to my own, well, biased conclusions. Okay, that's darn poor practice for a reviewer or for anyone who wants the name of being "thoughtful."
Stewart strongly condemns Consol for safety violations which likely led to the explosion. All of those were related to the accumulation of explosive materials in the mine.
I think what bothered me at first was the deep stridency of the author's anti-industry prose before there was any factual development. But then, this is a book and not a courtroom. As she develops a story in her own way, author Stewart recites a great deal of the objective evidence to the effect that this accident was much more preventable than most and that any reasonable manager should have foreseen the great risk of a catastrophic explosion.
Coal dust, particularly when suspended in air, is explosive. For that matter, something that we would think is as innocuous as wheat dust is fairly explosive. In the coal mines, coal dust should be controlled by applying rock dust (crushed limestone), by spraying water where equipment is working and just by cleaning up. Of course, none of that directly produces coal.
In addition, coal freely emits methane, which is the principal ingredient in natural gas. Stewart nicely explains why autumn and winter weather causes significantly increased methane levels in a coal mine. The exposed coal in No. 9 emitted something in the order of three million cubic feet of methane per day.
Mine equipment runs on high-voltage electricity. Therefore, there are lots of potential ignition sources (sparks) in a mine. Stewart describes the condition of the electrical system in No. 9 as being slapdash at best, such as short cables having many splices in them. And so, the "fire triangle" was complete, and as soon as the stars aligned, the mine was going to explode.
Stewart found a "smoking gun" memorandum from the 1968 investigation. Mines are ventilated by huge fans on the surface which draw out the methane and draw in fresh air. The "ventilation plan" is critical to the operation of the safe mine. Coal mines have warning system so that if a ventilation fan goes down, there is an alarm so that it may be repaired very quickly or the mine evacuated. The investigator found that this alarm system on one of the four fans had been intentionally bypassed. Stewart also found records and pieced together witness statements which made it apparent that the fan with the disabled alarm had gone down a couple of hours before the explosion. And so, the very likely scenario is that the failure of the fan together with the miners inside not knowing about it led to an increased methane gas concentration which was ignited by some spark.
Nobody can fault Stewart's research in the least. She describes them-UMW president Tony Boyle's self-aggrandizing and out-of-control behavior at Farmington and in the later Congressional investigations. Entirely by coincidence, about a month ago I was talking to a reporter who was there in 1968. He described to me Boyle's behavior nearly identically, albeit in more colorful language.
There are places where the information in No. 9 could be clearer. The science as presented behind the flammability and explosivity of methane and coal dust is a bit fuzzy. An example is the explanation of the self ignition of cold dust. When it is in suspension, that is unlikely. But it really doesn't matter, because there were so many potential ignition sources in that mine.
Also, the litigation is given somewhat short shrift. But if one thinks about it, that really doesn't detract from the book because the litigation never really addressed causation anyway.
Stewart does hint at some impropriety because the doctor who was the Marion County coroner did not order autopsies. That's an understandable suspicion because Stewart probably lacked knowledge of a fact. West Virginia coroners do not have to be medical doctors. (Medical examiners do.) Dr. Koon was a podiatrist.
Stewart well covers the Congressional investigation and passage of the 1969 federal coal mine legislation. She touches on the never-ending conflict between profit- convenience-driven shortcuts and efficiency-limiting regulations. What is less apparent, but equally true, is the inability of most proponents of either to see any of the others' view point.
I especially admire that Ms. Stewart avoided graphic or macabre descriptions of the traumatic injuries to the miners. The only reason to have done so would have been to enhance No. 9's commercial appeal with a little bit of salacious sensationalism.
Stewards dogged and exhaustive research shows clearly. This was not modern weak-tea Internet research. This was real, primary source research. Moreover, many of the people with whom Stewart spoke and at least some of the documents which she found would not have been available 20 years from now. For that, we owe Stewart our admiration and thanks. This is especially impressive in that No. 9 probably won't have a lot of commercial potential. The writer who slaps together a "tell-all" about some celebrity based on Internet snippets plus making things up in his/her own imagination is going to make a lot more money. Bonnie Stewart's scholarship gives her a lot of dignity and authenticity.
Five stars, no question.
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