"We're rolling out a new program to hold ourselves more accountable," said John Correll, deputy assistant secretary of labor for mine safety and health. He said the program includes more internal audits and performance reviews.

"Our challenge has been consistency — getting 2,300 (employees) to act the same way every day," Correll said.

Congress' investigatory arm, the General Accounting Office, reported in October that the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration was inadequately overseeing mine safety plans. The lax oversight could be causing mines to operate with insufficient ventilation and roof-support systems, it concluded.

MSHA oversees safety for the nation's 107,500 underground and surface coal miners.

Congress asked for the review after a September 2001 explosion that killed 13 miners at the Jim Walters Resources No.5 Mine in Brookwood, Ala., and a July 2002 flood that trapped nine miners for three days in the Quecreek Mine near Somerset, Pa.

Officials of the United Mine Workers union also charged that lax MSHA enforcement contributed to three deaths at CONSOL's McElroy Mine near Moundsville, W.Va., in January 2003 and to a fatality at Cody Mining Co. near McDowell, Ky., last June.

Correll said the two most recent accidents had no direct relationship to MSHA inspections, calling them "isolated situations."

But he acknowledged that "inspection practices were suspect," and he said that he has since traveled to field offices across the country reviewing agency policies and training.

"It was an isolated thing, but we saw areas we could improve," Correll said.

The official spoke to reporters at an MSHA safety seminar meant to address the high number of coal-mining deaths in West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia.

Since 2002, 44 of the nation's 63 coal-mining fatalities have occurred in those three states. Kentucky leads the region with 19 deaths, followed by West Virginia with 18 and Virginia with seven.

Four of the nation's six coal-mining deaths this year occurred in the the three states. While overall U.S. mining fatalities have declined each of the past three years, Correll said, the regional trend was alarming enough to call for the summit.

UMW President Cecil Roberts said the union was not invited to the meeting, which occurred on a negotiated holiday for union miners.

"We trust the scheduling of this seminar was not done intentionally by MSHA, but it does beg the question, `How in touch with coal miners are the industry and the government?'" Roberts said.

Correll said union officials were informed of the seminar three weeks ago. He said there was "no specific reason" union officials were not put on the agenda, which has been a practice at past MSHA seminars. He said he was disappointed no union officials attended.

Of union criticism that MSHA has cut enforcement under the Bush administration, Correll said, "We never back away from enforcement, but we have increased our emphasis on education, training and technical support. We think that's the right formula." Agency officials told seminar participants that coal miners new to a company, even those with experience, are more likely to get hurt or killed. Training programs should be altered to focus on new employees with experience at other mines, they said.More than two in five mine fatalities occur during a worker's first year at a mine, about half of those during a worker's first week, officials said.

    Altogether 23 miners were working in the Kunlun mine when it was flooded with about 3,000 cubic meters of water at 5:10 p.m., said Zhu Deming, chief engineer of the Zibo Mining Group, to which the mine belongs.

    Zhu said 19 of the miners were evacuated to the ground within two hours after the flooding, and rescuers were draining water from the mine at the speed of 180 cubic meters per hour, hoping to evacuate the trapped four.

    He said that the accident occurred due to inadequate information about the geological structure of the underground area and lack of water probing measures.

    However, the accident caused no damage to the mine's drainage, ventilation or lifting systems, he said.

    With a proven reserve of 500,000 tons of coal, the mine, located in Kunlun town of Zichuan district, Zibo city, was put into operation in 1993 and produces 60,000 tons of coal annually.

Highlights in history on this date:

1406 - King Robert III of Scotland dies and is succeeded by James I who was being held prisoner by the English.

1581 - Francis Drake arrives back in England after circumnavigating the globe and is knighted by Queen Elizabeth I on board his ship, The Golden Hind.

1611 - Denmark's King Christian IV declares war on Sweden.

1617 - John Napier, Scottish mathematician who invented the concept of logarithms, dies.

1618 - Cardinal Richelieu is ordered into exile in Avignon for intrigues with France's Queen Mother Marie de Medici.

1660 - England's King Charles II issues Declaration of Breda, promising religious tolerance.

1774 - Death of Oliver Goldsmith, Irish playwright, poet and novelist.

1818 - US Congress decides the American flag will consist of 13 red and white stripes and 20 stars, with a new star to be added for every new state of the Union.

1841 - William Harrison, ninth president of the United States, dies after only 32 days in office.

1844 - Germany occupies South-West Africa, Togoland and Cameroons.

1887 - Susanna Salter is elected in Argonia, Kansas, to become the world's first female mayor.

1902 - British financier Cecil Rhodes leaves $US10 million in his will to provide scholarships for Americans at Oxford University.

1905 - An earthquake strikes the province of Lahore, then part of India, killing 19,000 people.

1912 - Chinese republic is proclaimed in Tibet.

1918 - Second Battle of the Somme ends in World War I with German gains of some 60 km at a cost of 150,000 killed or wounded; Allied casualties numbered 160,000.

1927 - Fourteen die when a dam on the Cascade River, Tasmania, bursts and floods the town Derby.

1932 - US researcher Professor CG King of Pittsburgh isolates vitamin C for the first time after five years of research.

1933 - US Navy dirigible Akron falls into Atlantic Ocean off New Jersey, taking 73 lives.

1941 - Andre Michelin, one of the French tyre manufacturing brothers, dies.

1942 - Japanese naval forces sink three British warships in Bay of Bengal during World War II.

1949 - NATO is founded when the North Atlantic Treaty is signed in Washington by foreign ministers of United States, Britain, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Canada for mutual assistance against aggression in North Atlantic.

1964 - Archbishop Makarios abrogates 1960 treaty between Greece, Turkey and Cyprus, and heavy fighting erupts in north-west Cyprus; The Beatles set a record by having all of the top five US singles at the same time. They also have the number one US album.

1968 - US civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

1969 - Doctors in Houston, Texas, hospital implant first complete artificial heart in 47-year-old man, who dies four days later.

1975 - Some 155 children die when a US Air Force transport plane carrying Vietnamese orphans crashes on takeoff from Saigon.

1979 - Pakistan's former Prime Minister Zulkifar Ali Bhutto, ousted by the military in a coup 21 months earlier, is executed by hanging.

1983 - The US space shuttle Challenger roars into orbit on its maiden flight; Death of Gloria Swanson, US stage and screen actress.

1986 - Israel formally asks for access to United Nations War Crimes Commission file on former Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim.

1988 - Iran hammers Iraq's vital oil centres with missiles and fighter bombers.

1990 - Britain publishes a controversial bill to grant citizenship to up to 225,000 Hong Kong residents in the runup to the colony's handover to China in 1997. On the same day China formally adopts the future constitution of Hong Kong; Soviet President Mikhael Gorbachev warns republic of Estonia to rescind independence declaration.

1991 - Iran's official news agency says over one million Kurds are massed along the Iran-Iraq border trying to escape Iraqi troops who are reportedly killing them as they flee.

1992 - More than 1,200 French troops, the first major contingent of a UN peacekeeping force, arrives in war-torn Croatia, as Bosnia mobilises its national guard to quell violence; Archaeologists open Maya tomb strewn with jade and possible remains of 1,400-year-old King.

1994 - Serbs launch major attack on besieged Muslim enclave Gorazde.

1995 - More than 50 people die when about 200 heavily armed Muslim extremists ransack the southern Philippine town Ipil, battling troops flown in to quell the insurgency.

1996 - Sweeping aside a "just-following-orders" defence, a military judge in Rome orders former Nazi SS Captain Erich Priebke to stand trial for helping massacre 335 civilians in World War II.

1997 - Russian pastoral poet and novelist Vladimir Soloukhin, dies.

1998 - The environment ministers of the world's eight top industrialised nations announce new efforts to curb smuggling of hazardous waste, endangered species and substances that damage the earth's ozone layer; A methane gas explosion at the Skochinsky mine in Donetsk, Ukraine, kills 63.

1999 - NATO warplanes and missiles attack an army headquarters, oil refineries and other targets in Yugoslavia, while Yugoslav forces take on Kosovo Albanian guerrillas making a last stand in the province's western mountains.

2000 - West African intervention troops begin formally pulling out of Sierra Leone, amid fears the withdrawal may leave a security vacuum following the country's brutal eight-year civil war.

2001 - Sudan's defence minister and 15 other military officials are killed when their plane crashes on takeoff. The loss comes during a critical point in country's civil war.

2002 - US President George W Bush urges Israel to pull its troops back from Palestinian cities and dismisses Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as a failed leader who has "betrayed the hopes of his people"; Angola's army and UNITA rebels sign a formal ceasefire in the capital Luanda to end the 27-year-old war in which about one million people died.

2003 - US forces seize control of Baghdad's Saddam International Airport, their biggest prize so far in the war and rename it Baghdad International.
___________________________________________________________
United States Mine Rescue Association
www.usmra.com

Speaking during the annual general meeting of the Botswana Chamber of Mines and the 2004 inter-mine safety award competition, Williams said mines continued to let an intolerable and unacceptable safety situation prevail in the industry during 2003.

Williams said the mines experienced 40 serious accidents compared to 48 during the previous year. Six people died in mine accidents in 2003 compared to three in 2002.

Falling ground was the major cause of the accidents while the least cause was electrical and winding operations. He added that the severity of the accidents also appeared to have gone up during 2003.

Kago Moshashane, the deputy permanent secretary in the Ministry of Minerals, Energy and Water Resources, said the long term viability of the mining industry depends on continuous improvement in the safety, health and environment management programmes as well as technical and commercial efficiency.

Moshashane said the safety, health and environmental programmers must meet requirements of national statutes as well as the demands of global best practice.

However, he said, mines should do more than meet the statutory requirements because the safer the workforce, the more productive it would be. Safety in the mines means enhanced profitability and further investments.

He congratulated the management and employees of Tati Nickel Mining Company for winning both the inter-mine safety competition and the inter-mine severity rating competition for the year 2003.

Reopening of Ebensburg, Pa., Coal Mine Sparks Excitement Among Former Workers

By Tom Lavis, The Tribune-Democrat, Johnstown, Pa. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

4-10-2004, 18.55

MOSCOW, April 10 (Itar-Tass) -- Rescuers are trying to make their way towards coalminers where they are believed to have been trapped under the ground after a methane explosion in the workings at the Taizhina mine in the Kemerovo region on Saturday morning.

Currently two possible rescue plans are being considered. Initially rescuers wanted to use the closest way but it was blocked by rock for 25 metres. Since it would have taken too much time to clear the way, it was decided to use another route, longer but possibly more passable, through the underground tunnels at the neighbouring mine.

Meanwhile, rescuers lifted eight more bodies to the surface, thus bringing the death toll to 16. The duty officer at the crisis management committee told Itar-Tass that 16 people have been rescued from the workings. Two of them were hospitalised. But up to 30 more people may remain under the ground. Their fate is unknown. Four hospitals in Osinniki, where the mine is located, and Novokuznetsk are ready to admit the victims.

One hundred and fifty rescuers are working at the site. Kemerovo region governor Aman Tuleyev had a telephone conversation with Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu to brief him on what had been done to rescue the miners.

The methane explosion happened at the Taizhina coalmine about 650 metres under the ground. It did not cause much damage or big fire, officials at the regional department of civil defence and emergency situations told Itar-Tass.

Coalmine director Valer Naumkin said that the methane outburst had supposedly hit many underground sections, and it complicated the rescue operation.

Coal extraction has been halted at the mine. A special commission is investigating the causes of the accident.

The prosecutor's office in Osinniki has instituted legal proceedings in connection with the case, under the Criminal Code article on "violation of safety regulations during mining works."

The coalmine belongs to the Yuzhkuzbassugol company. It was set up at the site of the closed mine Vysokaya.

According to specialists, there are more than 10 million tonnes of coal in Taizhina. It employs 650 people and produces at least 700,000 tonnes of coal a year.