LOGAN, W.Va. -- A federal inspector responsible for overseeing safety in a mine where two men died in a Jan. 19 fire said he had no means of properly checking water pressure in a fire sprinkler system which failed to work when needed.

Months before the fire at the Aracoma Coal Co.'s Alma 1 Mine, officials in the Mine Safety and Health Administration's District 4 office in southern West Virginia canceled a training session on how to check the water pressure along fire suppression systems inside mines, according to internal memoranda obtained by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

"At that time, I didn't have anything to check the water sprinklers with," said Edward Paynter, whose inspections inside Alma 1 failed to spot the defective sprinklers.

The fire erupted on a conveyor belt inside the Alma 1 mine and smoke poured through gaps in walls intended to seal off the air in the belt area, fatally stranding two miners, Ellery "Elvis" Hatfield, 47, and Don I. Bragg, 33. Investigators suspect there was not enough water pressure to stop the fire.

Since the fire, both Mr. Paynter and Minness Justice, another inspector from MSHA's Logan district office, have been informed they are subjects of an internal review investigation into whether they properly inspected the Alma 1 mine.

The Alma 1 blaze broke out 17 days after a more widely publicized mining accident, the Jan. 2 explosion at Sago Mine in the state's northern region which killed 13 men. But where the Sago disaster was later blamed on a combination of bad luck, balky respirators and inadequate standards, conditions at Alma 1 suggest rules already on the books had not been followed, inspectors had not received training needed to perform some crucial checks and government safety inspections by the MSHA field office in the Logan district office had been incomplete.

A June 25, 2005 memorandum by Richard McDorman, an instructor at the agency's National Mine Academy in Beckley, W.Va., to Ray McKinney, then chief of the agency's coal group, noted a series of training meetings on water pressure inspection in the agency's 11 districts. Under District 4, which oversaw Aracoma, a Massey Energy subsidiary, was the notation: "Will present program to supervisors during staff meeting in July." An asterisk next to that notation directed Mr. McKinney to a postscript: "District 4 canceled my visit."

In March, as an MSHA investigation team was in the midst of its probe into the Alma 1 deaths, Mr. McDorman sent an update to Mr. McKinney that mentioned District 4: "Was contacted and told that July staff meeting was full. I was told maybe next month.

"Next month hasn't arrived."

Neither Mr. McKinney nor Mr. McDorman would comment on the memos, with both referring a reporter to MSHA's public spokesman. That spokesman, Dirk Fillpot, issued a statement on behalf of MSHA director David Dye.

"MSHA is conducting a thorough investigation into the Aracoma Alma Mine No. 1 accident, and also is conducting a complete review of the agency's performance at the mine prior to the accident. As is the case with any internal review, if the agency identifies any deficiencies in the agency's performance, MSHA will take appropriate actions to address them," the statement says.

Federal regulations require fire suppression systems inside mines to provide 50 pounds per square inch of water pressure in order to deliver water throughout the mine in the event of fire.

Sprinklers above conveyor belt lines are considered essential because the belts frequently spill coal and coal dust on rollers that, if badly aligned or defective, can freeze up, creating friction hot enough to trigger fires. Investigators suspect this as the cause of the Alma 1 fire.

A series of interviews and documents reviewed by the Post-Gazette show that the water lines in Alma 1 lacked the water pressure to fight a fire, and that conveyor belts inside the mine often had spilled coal and defective rollers.

Mr. Paynter and Mr. Justice are now the subjects of an investigation by an MSHA Internal Review team, and Mr. Paynter, in an interview last week, acknowledged that investigators had told him they did not believe he could have completed safety inspections at the mine, especially along the conveyor belts, in the time his inspection reports say.

Unchecked sprinklers
Federal regulations require water lines in underground coal mines provide 50 pounds of pressure capable of spraying 50 gallons per minute from a fire nozzle. Sprinkler systems hooked in to such lines must provide at least one-quarter gallon of water per minute per square foot on the belt line.

Fire suppression at Alma 1 was an especially important detail because the mine had received a waiver permitting it to use air flowing across the conveyor belt as "intake," or incoming fresh air, in sections in which miners were working. That means that when the fire broke out, the smoke, instead of being carried out of the mine, was blown back into the area the men were working.

Ordinarily, conveyor belts are supposed to be set up on an air outtake, through which old air flows out of a mine.

Federal regulations required a fire suppression system that, according to inspection records in the mine in the months leading up to the accident, were not always followed.

Field inspection notes and citation records show that for two months in a row last year, an inspector discovered that belt lines inside Alma 1 lacked the 500 feet of fire hose called for in federal regulations. Mr. Paynter, then in charge of inspections at Alma 1, cited the mine for lacking fire hose along a 6-foot-wide conveyor belt line Aug. 16 and again Sept. 12 for failing to have placed hose along another belt line.

Follow-up reports say the mine provided the hose after being cited.

Two months later, when Mr. Justice had taken over inspections at Alma 1, he discovered a fire suppression system at a battery charging station in the No. 2 working section, the area in which both Mr. Hatfield and Mr. Bragg worked, had been installed but not hooked up.

"It was in place but could not function," Mr. Justice wrote Nov. 28.

Two days later, a follow-up report noted, "Management has ordered a new type of suppression system; the delivery is pending."

Lack of training
Against that backdrop of missing or nonfunctioning equipment, inspectors routinely examined fire suppression systems without fully testing their functionality, according to an interview with Mr. Paynter.

On May 16, 2005, according to Mr. Paynter's inspection field notes, he examined belt lines throughout the mine. Along the mine's 6-foot coal conveyor belt, its largest, he reported checking "CO sensors and sensorline," the belt's fire alarm system, and "waterline and fire outlet valves."

He recorded no violations.

At the No. 6 conveyor belt drive, he reported checking "fire suppress/on/off controls."

Whether the line had the required 50 pounds per square inch water pressure necessary to deliver enough water onto a burning belt is unclear.

Mr. Paynter told the Post-Gazette he turned the on-off valve on the water system and checked to see if the release of pressure on the line would cause the belt to stop.

"I know it did what it was required to do when I checked it," he said.

In fact, Mr. McDorman's office at the Mine Academy already had briefed some districts on how to test for what they referred to as the "50-50" standard on fire suppression lines. Later memos show four other MSHA districts in which training was begun or finished.

The academy had prepared and distributed a brochure describing ways to test water pressure inside mines, using a pressure gauge set on a fire valve fitting, and a formula for measuring the flow rate.

One inspector, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said it also was possible to simply hold a bucket beneath a running sprinkler, time the flow, and extrapolate on whether the system delivered enough water.

In the case of the belt fire at Alma 1, Timmy P. Morgan, a rescue team member, said the sprinklers delivered "a trickle" of water. Mr. Morgan provided that statement to Tonya Mounts Hatfield, a Gilbert, W.Va., lawyer who is representing the widow of Mr. Hatfield.

Instead of flowing water, notes from the conversation with Mr. Morgan say, numerous spent fire extinguishers were found in the area along the belt drive where the fire was centered. Mr. Morgan died this year of a heart attack.

Unpowered fire alarm
In addition to questions about the adequacy of the belt line's sprinkler system and its inspection, doubts have arisen about whether miners underground were able to hear an alarm hooked into the mine's carbon monoxide detector line. The CO detectors are required as a super-sensitive fire alarm system, in part because the mine uses belt air to provide oxygen to miners in along the working face.

Records show that technicians at MSHA's certification center in Tridelphia, W.Va., opened a fire alarm May 25 that had been installed in the area of the blaze and discovered that an internal nickel cadmium battery was not hooked up.

"That would mean anyone in the area may not hear or see it," said Doug Coon, an official with Pyott-Boone Electronics, which manufactured the unit.

Mr. Coon said the monitor, which showed signs of smoke, apparently had been seized by MSHA immediately after the fire and retained for testing.

The alarm, called an 805-C remote alarm, used some low voltage power from the carbon monoxide monitor line, but required the battery to provide power for flashing lights and an audible alarm inside.

Had the alarm gone off, those hearing it would have been instructed to contact the mine office to determine whether there was danger.

Mr. Coon was unable to determine whether the battery had been disconnected deliberately or if it had not been hooked up. To prevent batteries from draining, the units are shipped with one wire disconnected and a note on the mounting bracket warning users to connect it.

According to Mr. Coon, tests on the carbon monoxide monitors showed they functioned.

MSHA, however, has raised questions about whether the records of the carbon monoxide monitors are complete, and investigators have said they are trying to determine whether someone in the mine attempted to delete computer files that would have shown an earlier rise in CO, an indication of fire, than previously reported.

Two MSHA officials with access to details of the ongoing investigation said a computer technician was called in to retrieve deleted files from a mine office computer that was linked to the underground monitors.

The agency took the mine's computer into possession as evidence March 2.

Prior inspections inside Alma 1 show at least one citation for problems with the carbon monoxide detector line. On Nov. 28, Mr. Justice cited the mine for a violation of the atmospheric monitoring standards.

"The CO sensor positioned at the tail piece of the No. 2 section along the No. 2 4-foot belt was not hooked into the system," he wrote. A follow-up notation, dated Dec. 12, does not indicate whether the sensor was later hooked up. It reads, simply: "Management has the required amount of air moving across the co-sensor at the tail of the No. 4 4-foot belt of the No. 2 section."

On a belt line, debris
In the days after the fire at Alma 1, a team of inspectors from District 4 and, later, the MSHA office in Madisonville, Ky., scoured sections of the mine unaffected by the fire. One MSHA inspector, according to a source with access to the investigation, described conditions there as "pre-1968," the year modern mine safety laws went on the books.

Inspectors filed reports showing widespread problems they believed could not have been overlooked easily, either by officials at the mine or by government inspectors.

One notable instance, according to records, was a conveyor belt line in another section of the mine that had accumulations of spilled coal and coal dust, both highly flammable, for roughly 5,000 feet. At points, the inspectors found, the spilled coal reached the level of the lower rollers on the belts, raising the possibility of friction contact that could ignite the waste. Of the belt's rollers, the inspection report shows 68 either missing or defective, something they viewed as a disaster in the waiting.

In March, both Mr. Paynter and Mr. Justice were informed they were being sent to the mine academy for further training, Mr. Paynter said. Since then, the men have remained stationed at the academy and both have been informed they are subject to an investigation by an internal review team based in Norton, Va.

"You know, they're going to have to blame someone," Mr. Paynter told the Post-Gazette in an interview 10 days ago.

Investigators, he said, told him they doubted he could have performed the number of inspections over the long distances cited in some of his earlier inspection reports, reports in which he most often reported finding no violations of safety standards.

"They said that, physically, I couldn't have traveled the distance I said I traveled at the time," he said. "On the belt lines, they said, 'You couldn't have done this in the time frame you gave us.' "

Mr. Justice had declined all interview requests. In previous reports, a fellow MSHA employee, Danny Woods, quoted him as saying he had wanted to write an order closing the belt line on which the fire occurred, but had been held back by a supervisor.

Mr. Justice later told investigators he had been misquoted by Mr. Woods.

"I only talked with him about generalities in the mining industry," Mr. Justice said last week.

But another acquaintance of Mr. Justice, Jack Spadaro, a former MSHA official who resigned in a widely publicized whistle-blowing case, said Mr. Justice had told him several times that he was held back from acting more strongly on safety violations.

"[Mr. Justice] is saying he wanted to do tough inspections," Mr. Spadaro said. In the case of at least one conveyor belt line at Alma 1, Mr. Spadaro said, Mr. Justice felt restrained.

"He wanted to close that down and he was told not to," Mr. Spadaro said.

Bangalore, India — Four persons were killed in an explosion at a temporary shed in which explosive substances were stored illegally, in Devanahalli police station limits in Bangalore Rural district.

The incident is said to have taken place late on Wednesday night or in the early hours of Thursday. It came to light around 8.30 a.m. on Thursday and the police reached the spot an hour later.

The police said the victims could be quarry workers and that the explosion could have occurred while they were preparing gelatine sticks in a crude manner using sulphur, phosphorous and other chemicals. Three bags containing chemicals have been seized from the spot.

The explosion occurred at the shed built on an agricultural land in Naraganahalli village on Chikkajala-Devanahalli Road, around 40 km from Bangalore.

The land belonged to Venkataramanappa, a quarry owner from neighbouring Kempathimmanahalli. He would have probably hired the workers to prepare gelatine sticks and to carry out explosions at quarries, the police said. "Since Venkataramanappa is at large, we are unable to get the details from him," the police said. On the basis of a voter identity card found at the scene of the blast, the police identified one of the deceased as Kupendran of Gudiatham in Tamil Nadu. The identity of the three others, suspected to be from Tamil Nadu, is not known. All of them were aged between 25 and 30, the police said. The local people said that the four had been staying at the new shed for the past one month. Two bodies were charred beyond recognition and the other two blown into pieces. Severed organs were strewn over a distance and the police had a tough time keeping away crows and stray dogs.

Reduced to rubble

The shed, built of hollow cement bricks and asbestos sheets, was reduced to rubble. Household articles, clothes and a bicycle were destroyed in the explosion. Experts from Forensic Science Laboratory, Bangalore, collected samples from the accident site for examination. The Devanahalli police have registered a case under the Explosives Act and a case of negligence leading to death against Venkataramanappa.

Kentucky's coal companies are being alerted that breathing devices that miners use to escape smoky or dusty mines may be damaged by exposure to extreme heat or other improper storage.

Gov. Ernie Fletcher yesterday ordered the release of a safety bulletin warning about potential problems with self-contained self-rescuer units. The warnings follow tests by West Virginia that found air packs exposed to extreme heat, such as that generated in a car on a warm day, failed to perform properly.

The Kentucky Office of Mine Safety and Licensing's bulletin requires companies to remove from service any devices that have a questionable history of storage or have been subjected to extreme high temperatures. The devices are CSE SR-100 units manufactured before 2004.

"Miners' lives are on the line each time they begin a shift, and we are taking steps toward ensuring that SCSR units are in proper working order," Fletcher said in a statement.

WASHINGTON, Sept 6 (Reuters) - Although the U.S. Senate rejected his choice last month, President George Bush has renominated Richard Stickler, a former Pennsylvania mining official, to head the federal government's mine safety agency.

Senator Robert Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat, originally put a hold on Stickler's nomination for three months, saying the White House's candidate held the industry's interests above miners' safety. When Congress adjourned for its August recess, the nomination was automatically rejected.

Byrd said in a statement he hopes the Senate will turn down the nomination again.

Stickler was the director of Pennsylvania's Bureau of Deep Mine Safety for six years and also worked for Massey Energy (MEE.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Bethlehem Steel Company. He currently has a six-month contract to work as an advisor to the Department of Labor, which oversees the Mine Safety and Health Agency.

The Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee does not plan on holding any more hearings on the nomination, and a committee spokesman did not know when it would vote on Stickler.

"It's appalling that the president would renominate Richard Stickler for this critical mine safety position in the face of intense opposition from miners and their families," said Sen. Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat who also opposed the nomination originally.

It's not exactly a compliment when Congress is the hare and you're the tortoise, but that pretty much sums up the state Legislature when it comes to updating Pennsylvania's mine safety laws.

Responding with unusual speed to 12 deaths during a January accident in West Virginia's Sago mine, Congress in June passed and President Bush signed the first changes in federal regulations governing mine operators since 1977. If that seems like a woefully long time, consider that Pennsylvania has not up dated its laws since 1962.

The state is so far behind that there isn't even any mention of air packs -- known in the industry as self-contained self- rescuers, or SCSRs -- which were at the heart of criticism in the West Virginia accident.

Two bills addressing air packs and aspects of the Quecreek accident in Somerset County four years ago were introduced in February by state Sen. Richard Kasunic, D-Fayette.  Although the federal law governs Pennsylvania, Kasunic and the Rendell administration want some provisions in a new law specific to the state.

The bills have languished in the Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, as mine operators and unions representing miners continue to disagree. With a short fall session in an election year, the chances for action before the end of 2006 are dwindling.

The committee chair, Sen. Mary Jo White, R-Venango, observed to The Associated Press: "I don't know how the Legislature is going to be able to broker a compromise when the [Department of Environmental Protection] hasn't been able to do it in three years."

Well, maybe the Legislature, having heard the debate and weighing all the input, will have to show some leadership. Or, as eloquently stated by Joseph Sbaffoni, director of the state Bureau of Mine Safety: "There's going to come a time when [policymakers] need to step up and take care of business."

By Aleksandras Budrys

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Fire broke out on Thursday at a gold mine in Russia's Eastern Siberia owned by London-listed Highland Gold Mining, trapping at least 19 workers underground, emergency officials said.

An Emergency ministry spokeswoman said 48 workers had been in the mine in the remote Chita region, located 5,000 km (3,100 miles) east of Moscow on the Chinese border, when the fire erupted at a depth of 85 to 135 meters (255 to 405 ft).

Rescue workers safely evacuated 29 of them, she said.

In a conflicting report, Interfax news agency quoted officials at the regional emergencies center as saying that 64 miners had been in the pit and 33 of them were still trapped.

Highland Gold, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange, confirmed that the fire had broken out in the central shaft of its Darasun mining complex.

"The situation is complex and we are monitoring it every 15 minutes," a Highland Gold official said.

Chita's regional authorities said a severe fire broke out at 2:15 pm local time (0415 GMT) as a result of welding work that violated safety rules. The fire was still burning.

Interfax quoted local officials saying rescuers were trying to bring the trapped miners to the surface through a horizontal tunnel to a second vertical shaft 5 km (3 miles) away from the scene of the blaze.

The Darasun mine, the smaller of Highland Gold's two main gold projects in Russia, produced 11,761 ounces of gold in the first half of this year.

Highland Gold has forecast total gold output this year of 180,000-185,000 ounces. The company is one-fifth owned by Canada's Barrick Gold, the world's largest gold miner.

RESCUERS in Siberia battled fierce heat and smoke to try and reach more than 30 miners trapped in a burning gold mine, Russian news agencies reported.

The miners were still missing more than 13 hours after fire broke out underground at the British-owned coal mine in the Chita region, which borders China and Mongolia, Russian news agencies quoted officials as saying.

The rescue operation is “extremely complicated,” a spokeswoman for the Chita regional governor told ITAR-TASS.

“Thick smoke and high temperatures are observed in the shaft, which is complicating rescue work,” ITAR-TASS also quoted the administration of Chita as saying.

Fire broke out at 2.15am (AEST) at a depth of 85-130m in the gold mine in Vershino-Darasunsky, northeast of the regional capital Chita, the emergency situations ministry said.

Of the 64 miners present at the time, 31 were soon rescued.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The final death toll from a fire at a remote Russian gold mine reached 25 on Sunday as rescuers found the bodies of four men, the last of the miners trapped deep underground three days earlier.

Relatives had been keeping vigil on the surface hoping the four might be brought out alive after eight survivors emerged from the pit on Saturday.

All 33 men trapped when the fire broke out in the mine's main shaft on Thursday have now been accounted for, Interfax news agency said, quoting the local administration in the Chita region of Eastern Siberia.

A rescue operation involving 300 people and headed at the scene by Russian Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu was being wound down. The first funerals, for 14 miners, were to take place on Monday in the region, near the Chinese border.

Russia's state environmental watchdog has announced an urgent safety investigation into the Darasun mine, owned by London-listed Highland Gold Mining, and also into some mines operated by rival gold mining firm Polyus Gold

Rescuers trying to reach the miners had to struggle against thick smoke and high temperatures from a fire that they managed to localise but not extinguish.

On Saturday, three miners walked out of the mine unaided. One of the three said they escaped after they felt fresh air in a tunnel and moved towards its source.

They directed rescuers to a second group of five miners who were found alive at a depth of 435 metres (1,427 feet).

Russian television showed a weeping woman throwing herself at a miner as he stepped out of a lift cage that brought him out of the mine. But after that rescuers found only bodies.

The fire broke out during welding work deep in the central shaft of the mine, one of the oldest in Russia.

Highland Gold shares plunged 11 percent on Friday, following losses of 4.5 percent the day before.

The Darasun mine is the smaller of Highland Gold's two operational gold mines in Russia. The complex produced 11,761 ounces of gold in the first half of this year, around 13 percent of the company's total production.

Highland Gold is one-fifth owned by Canada's Barrick Gold, the world's largest gold miner. Fleming Family & Partners and its affiliates hold 19.5 percent and the company's Anglo-Russian management team a further 12.5 percent.

Tucked in the desolate foothills of Chita, the Darasun mine is Russia's oldest hard-rock gold deposit with proven reserves of 31 tonnes and estimated resources of 96 tonnes.

Polyus Gold, Russia's biggest gold miner, said there was "nothing extraordinary" in the investigation into some of its mines by the environmental watchdog.

"We are constantly working with regulatory bodies, which routinely check the condition of our enterprises," Polyus Investor Relations Director Denis Davydov said.

SAN JUAN DE SABINAS, Mexico -- Six months after this country's worst coal mining accident in a generation, Elvira Martinez is still waiting for her husband to come home.

She last saw him Feb. 18 as he prepared for an overnight shift at the Pasta de Conchos mine in a barren desert plain about 80 miles south of the Texas border. A few hours into the shift, a methane explosion triggered rock falls, trapping 65 workers. One body has been recovered.

Now, Elvira waits.

Almost every day, she and a group of wives and other relatives sit at the mine's entrance. A blue tarpaulin protects them from the sun; a rattling fan provides token relief from summer temperatures that regularly top 100 degrees. Nearby, a security gate is draped with dozens of white sheets, each bearing a message for the mine owner and for the world.

"We want our loved ones. Now!"

For months, the story of the widows of Pasta de Conchos captivated Mexico. Television crews camped out near the mine during the accident's aftermath, beaming shots of anguished family members to all corners of the country. Human rights organizations and a Catholic bishop weighed in on the progress of the recovery effort and the feud among relatives, the federal government and Grupo Mexico, one of the world's largest mining companies.

The accident also contributed to months of labor strife that led to strikes at the Grupo Mexico's huge copper mines and Mexico's largest steel mill.

Grupo Mexico officials have promised to recover each body trapped in Pasta de Conchos. They are pouring millions of dollars into a cleanup operation that has cleared 10,000 tons of rock from the 1.4-mile-long mine and could last months, if not years. They have organized an extensive assistance program, with scholarships for children of the miners and triple salaries for the widows.

Soon after the accident, the company also offered each widow a lump sum of $75,000, an enormous amount in a region where miner wages of $1 an hour are typical.

But many relatives still doubt the company's sincerity, and they see a continued presence at the mine as their only leverage.

"We think they want us to go away," said Guillermo Iglesias, son of a deceased miner and a spokesman for the families. "We want the bodies first."

The makeshift camp is a breeding ground for rumors. Some relatives suspect that Grupo Mexico is preparing to seal the mine, while others see coal, not deceased miners, as the primary focus of the recovery effort. Company officials say none of that is true.

The number of relatives who regularly show up at the mine has dwindled. On a recent afternoon, a dozen people -- sons, aunts, fathers, widows and children -- sat on plastic chairs and snacked on soft tacos.

Elvira Martinez is the only one of the widows who has turned down the company's $75,000 offer. She sees it as a buyout, an excuse to keep her away from her husband.

Unfinished business

Almost everything in Elvira's life is on hold. She has left her job. She has stopped all work on her family's new house, although she, her husband and their three children were planning to move there at the end of February, a week after the accident.

A slight woman with brown skin and shoulder-length hair, Elvira, 33, approaches each day with poise and focus concealing her grief. Her children sometimes complain about the long hours she spends away from home. She explains her motives to them in a calm, even tone.

"I don't feel like he's dead," she says, "because I haven't seen the body yet."

Elvira's unfinished home is in Palau, a town of about 15,000 people in the heart of Mexico's only coal mining region, a place where seemingly endless days of clear skies run up against the peaks of the Sierra Madre mountains.

Two hundred million years ago, the Gulf of Mexico extended across this area, allowing lush vegetation to thrive. Fossilized plants are now buried deep below the desert, and their remains yield about 12 million tons of coal a year.

When an Austrian engineer discovered these energy riches in the late 19th century, northern Coahuila state quickly transformed from a sparsely populated region of cattle ranchers to an industrial powerhouse. Thousands of Japanese immigrants came seeking work; some of their descendents, with Japanese surnames, are still here.

Coahuila coal feeds steel mills in Monclova and Monterrey, the country's third-largest city. Two coal-fired electric plants near the Texas border supply as much as 8 percent of Mexico's electricity.

As a result, dozens of towns live and die on mining, none more so than Palau. Its central plaza features a statue of a gold-tinted miner and a memorial for a 1939 accident that killed 67. At the main church, the priest and a seminarian are former miners.

All know the risks of one of the world's most dangerous professions, and, for the most part, they accept those risks.

The family's story

Jorge Bladimir Munoz took his first mining job more than a decade ago. He had been working at a factory near the U.S. border, but he wanted to be closer to his new wife, Elvira Martinez. They grew up blocks away from each other on Palau's dusty back streets.

"I didn't like him. He had a big ego," Elvira said of Jorge, who, as a boy, loved to boast of his prowess on the soccer field. Gradually, Elvira's impression changed, and the two started dating. At a New Year's Eve dance in 1991, he proposed. They married six months later. He was 20, she was 19.

Jorge was a thin man with a trim goatee and a serious demeanor. His children brought out his playful side, challenging him to wrestling matches in the living room or soccer games on the dirt road in front of Elvira's parents' house, where they all lived.

In 1996, Elvira and her husband began clearing a plot of land on the edge of town to start work on their own home. They spent two months using machetes to hack away thorny huisache trees. When money was available, Jorge and his friends would construct the building, piece by piece, using concrete blocks.

Two years ago, Jorge found a job at Pasta de Conchos. It paid him 600 pesos a week, about $60, an average wage for a miner. A few weeks before he started working, an inspector from Mexico's labor ministry discovered dozens of violations in the mine, including poor ventilation, gas and oil leaks, and excessive amounts of highly explosive coal dust, according to a report released this summer by Mexico's National Human Rights Commission.

Safety issues

Soon after the inspection, the mine's joint safety commission, comprising managers and union officials, told the government the most serious issues had been addressed. The government, which has five work-safety inspectors for more than 100 coal mines and dozens of factories in northern Coahuila, would go a year and a half without conducting a follow-up inspection.

Arturo Bermea Castro, an engineer and general director of operations for Grupo Mexico's mining division, said the company assiduously powdered the mine to prevent the spread of coal dust. Government representatives said they never received complaints from workers about dangerous conditions.

Some miners or their relatives say the company threatened to fire those who complained, although Grupo Mexico officials hotly reject that charge.

Jose Luis Calvillo regularly complained to his wife about high levels of methane in Pasta de Conchos. He wanted to leave, but he had no options. His father, a former miner who now works for the government, had been trying to find him a new job.

"I was scared, but there was no other work," said Sonia Godina Guevara, Mr. Calvillo's wife.

Fermin Rosales Martinez, one of 11 survivors of the Feb. 19 accident, said coal dust was a significant problem, along with exposed electrical wires. The company did not seem to take such things seriously.

Last year, a supervisor yelled at him for wearing an earring.

"There are worse problems in the mine," he told his boss. He was suspended for two days.

On Feb. 7, three months after their own verification deadline, government inspectors returned to Pasta de Conchos. They found that many of their safety concerns had been addressed, although their report said coal dust was still an issue in closed sections of the mine.

The accident

Jorge never told his wife Elvira about mining safety problems. He did, however, spend hours discussing the approaching date when they and their three children, Tania, Christian and Estefania, would move into their own home.

After 10 years of work and almost $30,000 of expenses, the house was livable. It still needed a master bedroom, but, as work continued, the couple could sleep in the living room with the children.

Jorge left for work at 9:30 p.m. Feb. 18, a Saturday. He told his wife he had bought a bag of cement to work on the house.

"See you tomorrow," he said.

In Nueva Rosita, a nearby coal-mining town, Mr. Calvillo and his wife also were preparing to move into a new home. Mr. Calvillo had spent part of the day installing electrical outlets. Before leaving for the mine's night shift, he kissed his three children and told his wife to stop doing chores. He said he'd help her finish the next morning.

About 2:30 a.m. Sunday, Fermin Rosales was standing on a platform just inside the mine entrance, waiting for equipment to arrive.

He heard an explosion. He felt a powerful blow to his back.

Two hours later, he said, he regained consciousness. He was in the same place, on the platform. He felt sharp pains all over his body. Huge rocks, support timbers and steel beams littered the mine floor. An engineer took him outside on a train car.

The Pasta de Conchos explosion was Mexico's most devastating coal-mining accident in 37 years. Everyone -- the federal and state governments, the company, the Mexican Congress, the mine workers union -- promised a detailed accounting of what went wrong.

Yet that accounting has been slow in coming. The recovery effort at the mine sometimes proceeds inches a day, as workers use pickaxes and jackhammers against 40-foot rock falls. On June 23, they found the body of Felipe de Jesus Torres, the only unmarried miner to die in Pasta de Conchos.

"We are responsible. Of course we are responsible. But we are not guilty," said Juan Rebolledo, Grupo Mexico's vice president for international affairs. "It's something you cannot control. Coal mines are dangerous everywhere in the world."

The company has said recovery work will continue, no matter what the cost.

A week after the accident, when the chance of finding survivors seemed almost nil, Grupo Mexico officials held a series of small meetings with the widows and offered the $75,000 cash payments. During her meeting, Elvira ran from the room.

Since then, she has received her husband's triple salary, a little more than $200 a week. But the extra money, she argues, "was a strategy to get us away from the company."

Many widows initially agreed, yet they found $75,000 difficult to turn down. Some soon adapted to a different standard of living, with new clothes, makeup and jewelry. A few bought pickup trucks.

And their numbers at the mine started to fall.

Officials are encouraging family members to start thinking about applying for their government pensions. Once that happens, the company will stop paying the triple salaries, and the widows will see a sharp reduction in their income.

According to local news reports, few relatives have picked up death certificates for the miners, the first step in applying for a government pension.

In June, Elvira and Mr. Rosales traveled to Mexico City to file a complaint with the National Human Rights Commission. The independent body had started an investigation of the accident several months before, after receiving an anonymous call about problems with federal government inspections at Pasta de Conchos.

The commission released a final, nonbinding report July 17. It equated the government's actions with a violation of the constitutional rights of the 65 deceased miners, and it said a failure to recover the bodies would amount to a violation of the widows' religious rights.

Mexico's labor secretary didn't accept the substance of the report, but he did agree to implement its recommendations, including a significant expansion of the number of workplace inspectors and an effort to eliminate inspection backlogs.

In Mexico's coal-mining country, life continues. Mr. Rosales recently finished months of psychiatric treatment to help him deal with depression and anger. His doctor says he is well enough to return to work at the mine, but he won't go back. His wife is trying to find him a job at the avocado-packaging plant where she works.

Elvira hasn't thought about a future beyond the recovery of her husband's body. She'll wait for months or years, whatever it takes. Her family's new home, a squat, one-story structure, is surrounded by barbed wire. Its interior walls are bare except for a small cross.

Elvira's two oldest children envision a different future, possibly with scholarship money from Grupo Mexico. Christian, 11, wants to be a chemist. His older sister, Tania, 13, who received nearly perfect grades in her classes this year, hopes for a career as an astronomer. Estefania, 4, is too young for those dreams.