KIEV, Ukraine (AP) - A Ukrainian coal mine where 100 workers were killed in a methane explosion two weeks ago has been hit by another blast.

A spokesman for the Emergency Situations Ministry says at least three miners were hurt. But the Interfax news agency reports at least five people were hurt and 35 more are missing.

Another report says there were nearly 400 workers in the mine this morning when the explosion occurred.

The blast in November was the worst coal-mining disaster in Ukraine since the breakup of the old Soviet Union.

The country's mines are considered to be some of the most dangerous on Earth because many are dilapidated and because coal in Ukraine is unusually deep in the ground, making mines more prone to methane buildup.

The explosion in Zhenxiong in the southwestern province of Yunnan happened on Sunday morning, the newspaper said.

China's coal industry is the deadliest in the world, with 2,163 miners killed in 1,320 accidents in the first seven months of 2007.

In May, a coal mine blast in northern Shanxi province killed 28 people.

Hundreds of mine workers gathered in the centre of Johannesburg. There was a good natured atmosphere although the miners say they are concerned that mining companies are putting production before safety.

It remains to be seen whether the National Union of Mine Workers (NUM) can bring 240,000 members out on strike. But the intention is to send a strong message to employers.

The chamber of mines says it supports the NUM's concerns for improved safety and says that government, employers and workers all need to take joint responsibility to improve conditions in the mines.

The meter will allow miners to quickly measure whether coal dust has been sufficiently mixed with rock dust to prevent a coal dust explosion, said Gerald L. Finfinger, senior scientist for mining at the National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory at Bruceton. That will save days of waiting for test results on samples of the coal dust-rock dust mixture, now conducted in a lab in southern West Virginia.

"You hope the mine does not blow up in the meantime," Finfinger said.

If the device measures the mixture at less than 65 percent rock dust, the miners can spread more of the rock dust -- typically crushed limestone -- to make the coal dust inert, Finfinger said.

The hand-held meter is just one of many coal mine health and safety research projects under way at the 180-acre complex that was operated by the U.S. Bureau of Mines for about 80 years until that agency was abolished in 1996.

Today, the issue of mine safety will be in the forefront during a United Mine Workers memorial service at 11 a.m. at the Robena Mine Memorial near Carmichaels, Greene County. The service will commemorate the 45th anniversary of the deaths of 37 miners killed on Dec. 6, 1962, in two gas and coal dust explosions at U.S. Steel Corp.'s Robena No. 3 Mine. UMW President Cecil Roberts and Edward Yankovich, international vice president for UMW District 2 in Pennsylvania, are scheduled to speak.

Researchers at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health's personal protective lab, and the Mine Safety and Health Administration's Pittsburgh Safety and Health Technology Center at Bruceton, are working on other mine safety improvements. They include devising methods to improve lighting so miners can better see potential hazards, to reduce noise that endangers hearing and to cut the amount of coal dust that miners breathe, which causes black lung.

Five of the battery-operated coal dust meters, which have liquid crystal displays that show results from tests on a thimble-sized sample of coal dust-rock dust, will be delivered to the NIOSH lab early next year, said Henry Perlee of Bethel Park, a retired Bureau of Mines researcher in the fire and explosives lab. Perlee's home-based company, H&P Technology Inc., is fine-tuning the meters under a contract with NIOSH, he said.

If the meter works as designed, it could lead to miners preventing explosions by adding more rock dust, said Ron Bowersox, a United Mine Workers health and safety representative for the union's District 2 in Pennsylvania.

"The need for this was seen many, many years ago," said Jack Pinkerton, director of the Geneva College technology development center, which worked on the device.

The center at the Beaver Falls college developed an analog meter in the mid-1980s, but the device never went beyond the prototype stage, Pinkerton said. The digital device, developed over the past few years, is much smaller and more accurate, Pinkerton said.

Keeping miners safe while initiating rescue attempts by using robots is an important initiative, said Mark Skiles, director of technical support for the MSHA and a former mine rescue team captain at the Cumberland Mine in Greene County.

The robots can go into areas following an explosion that are dangerous for humans because of lingering lethal gases, said Terry Hoch, chief of MSHA's safety and health technology center.

The agency is working with robotics experts from Carnegie Mellon University in Oakland on a "snake robot" that can go into small areas with camera, Hoch said. The snake robot is attached to a tether, so it can be pulled back, Hoch said.

The agency is looking to change the way it goes about mine rescue efforts, Skiles said. "We think there is a whole lot to be gained" by the research, he said.

The use of robots to help rescue miners trapped by explosions probably is further down the road, Bowersox said, because mine passageways after explosions are often littered with rock and other debris, which would block the path of a robot. Transmitting signals via cable also is difficult because cables could become tangled in the rockfall, he said.

The mine safety agency last month unveiled a "great escape" rescue system featuring a concrete tunnel that can allow miners to crawl to safety during an emergency. Sections of the concrete tunnel, which can have communications and tracking devices, can be added as work in the mine proceeds to different areas, said John P. Faini, chief of the approval and certification center in Tridelphia, W.Va., where the tunnel was built.

As of 6:20 p.m., at least 26 miners were still trapped underground in the village-run Xinyao pit, located in Hongtong County of Linfen, according to the headquarters of the rescue operation.

The headquarters said the accident happened at 11:15 p.m. Wednesday, but the local authorities didn't learn about it until 5a.m. Thursday.

The headquarters said it believed the colliery managers delayed in reporting the accident as they were trying to launch rescue operation by themselves, which wasted the best time for rescue and magnified the number of casualties.

A total of 15 workers were rescued or had managed to escape on their own, said sources with the coal mine safety bureau in Linfen, a coal-rich city 400 kilometers south of Taiyuan, the provincial capital. These workers are said to be in healthy condition.

Wang Hongliang, the legal representative of the mine, and Gao Jianmin, head of the mine, have been held by the police. The mine licenses have been sealed and bank accounts frozen.

Li Yizhong, head of the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety, and Zhang Baoshun, Party Secretary of Shanxi Provincial Committee of CPC, have arrived at the scene of the disaster.

Initial investigation shows that the accident was caused by illegal mining activities in the unauthorized No. 9 coal seam.

"The ongoing rescue operation is properly organized, however, we should learn lessons from the disaster, such as strictly banning any illegal mining activities and over-staffing, timely reporting, and not to enter blindly into rescues," Li said.

Shanxi province issued a circular Thursday evening ordering all coal mines to draw experience from the tragedy. Linfen City has suspended operation in all coal mines in the city.

Authorities disagreed with the number of miners trapped in the accident.

A press release published on the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety website at midday reported 40 deaths with 13 survivors and 74 unaccounted for.

The coal mine safety bureau in Linfen, however, would not confirm the figures in a phone interview with Xinhua in the afternoon.

Xinyao pit, owned by Ruizhiyuan Mining Co., is fully licensed and designed to produce 210,000 tons of coal annually. All its licenses are still valid.

Rescue work is underway. Investigators are identifying the victims and determining the cause of the tragedy.

On Thursday, lawyers for Lynda H. Anderson sought to add African Oxygen Limited, known as Afrox, to the suit pending in Kanawha Circuit Court.

Anderson is the widow of Thomas P. Anderson, one of the 12 miners who died after the Jan. 2, 2006, at the International Coal Group mine in Upshur County.

The amended complaint alleges that Afrox made parts for the self-contained self-rescuers, or SCSRs, that were supposed to provide the Sago miners with enough oxygen to safely escape the underground mine.

Parts supplied by Afrox were “unreasonably dangerous and unfit for their intended uses,” the amended complaint alleges.

The Anderson complaint is one of the separate suits, since consolidated, which have been filed on behalf of Sago survivor Randal McCloy Jr. and the estates of 11 of the 12 miners who died. Section foreman Martin Toler Jr. is the only victim for whom a suit has not been filed.

Kanawha Circuit Judge Charles King last month threw out three related cases filed by Sago victim family members who are not estate representatives. He ruled that those family members could not sue solely for emotional distress they experienced as a result of the disaster and incorrect reports that all of the miners had survived.

In a separate ruling, King also refused to dismiss claims against Wilbur Ross, the New York billionaire who founded ICG and controlled the Sago Mine since at least 2001.

At about 6:30 a.m. on Jan. 2, 2006, an explosion ripped through the Sago Mine south of Buckhannon. One miner, fireboss Terry Helms died soon after the blast from carbon monoxide poisoning.

Surrounded by smoke and toxic fumes, 12 other miners took shelter behind a makeshift barricade. Eleven of them died before rescuers reached them 41 hours later. Only McCloy survived.

It was the worst coal-mining disaster in West Virginia in nearly 40 years.

Families of the Sago miners had already included SCSR-maker CSE Corp. as a defendant in the civil suits that target ICG and various mine contractors and vendors.

They allege that “some or all of these SCSRs failed to function properly” after the explosion. As a result, they allege, the miners realized that it would be impossible for all of them to escape through the smoke, dust and bad air.

“Rather than leave some of their fellow workers behind due to the fact that they did not all have functioning SCSRs, the miners retreated together to an area at the face of the 2 Left section,” the suit says.

The lawsuit provided no complete details about the claims against Afrox.

Anderson family lawyer Al Karlin said that Sago victim lawyers are investigating concerns about problems with oxygen bottles Afrox supplies to CSE.

The CSE SR-100 unit was provided to Sago miners and is by far the most widely used SCSR in the U.S. coal industry.

The SR-100 uses a chemical reaction to produce a one-hour oxygen supply meant to help miners escape after a fire or explosion.

The units contain a small oxygen supply meant to kick-start them and inflate their breathing bags.

Months after the explosion, McCloy told investigators that SCSRs of four of the 12 trapped miners would not start. McCloy described how he tried especially hard to start the rescuer that belonged to his mining partner, Jerry Groves.

“I fought with it for I don’t know how long, trying to mess with that valve, blow air through it, or anything I could do, but nothing would work,” McCloy told state and federal officials.

Over the years, miners have repeatedly complained about SCSRs not starting or appearing to start slowly.

Government and industry officials have generally dismissed those complaints.

They said miners were not properly trained and did not understand how the SCSRs worked.

Afrox not only supplies parts for CSE’s SR-100 model rescuer, but also markets the SR-100 for CSE in South Africa, according to the company’s Web site.

Afrox also makes its own model SCSRs and is the “dominant supplier” of such units for the South African mining industry.

Rescuers from among 15 crews sent to the mine in Shanxi province's Hongtong county were pumping out deadly carbon monoxide from a shaft in hopes of finding survivors or recovering additional bodies, the central government's State Administration of Workplace Safety said on its Web site.

The exact number of miners underground at the time of Wednesday's accident was still unclear. Citing mine officials, Xinhua on Friday raised the figure to about 120 from the previously reported 111.

State broadcaster CCTV said the mine owner and its manager had been detained by police for questioning. The mine's bank accounts had been frozen.

Reports said managers delayed reporting the accident until early Thursday morning, wasting crucial hours when coordinated rescue efforts could be most effective.

Just 15 miners fled to safety, suffering only minor injuries.

In a sign of government frustration at the continuing high death toll in China's mines, safety administration chief Li Yizhong flew to the mine late on Thursday to inspect aboveground facilities and help lead rescue efforts, the administration Web site said.

Li, who has pushed to reduce China's high numbers of industrial deaths through shaming officials and demanding accountability, authorized additional resources for the rescue and "strengthened rescue command," it said.

The administration said the mine's No. 2 shaft had been cleared by some of the 15 rescue teams sent from the nearby coal industry center of Linfen. However, heavy carbon monoxide concentrations were hampering rescue efforts in the No. 9 shaft where other miners were believed to have been working, forcing workers to ventilate it mechanically before entering.

Work safety officials reached by telephone in Linfen and at provincial government headquarters said they had no updated information.

The mine, owned and run by the county government, was reportedly licensed to produce 210,000 tons of coal per year.

China's coal mines average 13 deaths a day from fires, explosions and floods, making them the world's deadliest. In August, 181 miners died when heavy rains flooded two mines in eastern Shandong province.

Many of the accidents are blamed on mine owners who disregard safety rules and fail to invest in required ventilation, fire control and other equipment.

Despite repeated safety crackdowns, the sizzling economy's voracious appetite for coal to generate electricity provides ample motivation for many operators to cut corners in pursuit of production bonuses.

The bodies of at least 105 people have so far been recovered from the Xinyao mine in Hongtong county in coal-rich Shanxi province, which was hit by an explosion on Wednesday.

Police have detained 33 coal mine managers and officials after they delayed reporting the blast until five hours later. Authorities have also suspended the mine's licence and frozen its bank accounts.

Mine owners tried to launch their own rescue operation, which newspapers said probably increased casualties. Miner Yang Yingcai accused the authorities of attempting to cover up the accident.

About 50 young miners and security guards "blindly" rushed to the rescue of their trapped colleagues, but never returned, the Beijing News said.

"We never received any rescue training," the Beijing News quoted miner Mao Caoliang as saying. "We did not know what to do or what not to do when inside the mine. No one told us what to do when faced with an emergency."

"We carried oxygen masks with us but did not know how to use them. Many suffocated," Mao added.

More than 120 rescuers were searching for victims. There were 15 survivors.

Xu Zhancheng, chief engineer of the Shanxi provincial bureau of coal mine safety, said a preliminary investigation suggested a coal dust explosion resulted in the accident.

The Beijing Youth Daily said the mine failed to install a gas detection system.

And explosives were stocked in a storeroom underground.

"I'll leave this place and never work in a mine again," the China Daily quoted Han Xinyue, 38, from the northern province of Hebei, as saying.

The village-run mine was licensed, but the No. 9 pit, where about 60 miners were working, had not been authorised for production.

The mine produces about 210,000 tonnes of coal a year.

China has been trying to tighten safety regulations but its coal industry is still the world's deadliest, claiming close to 5,000 lives last year.

China will soon place on trial 11 defendants accused over a mine disaster in November 2005 that killed 171 people, Xinhua also reported.

According to local government authorities, the miners are in stable condition and walked out of the shaft at 1:15 a.m. Sunday with the help of rescuers. They have been sent to local hospital for medical check-up and treatment.

The miners had been trapped for 129 hours after the roof of a private iron and gold ore pit collapsed at 6 p.m. Monday in Chengde, a popular summer resort in Hebei Province.

But, the mine owner failed to report the accident to local authorities in Chengde City until Thursday morning.

An investigation into the cause of the accident is under way.

Rhodes monitors the training session from a distance, giving Mohave County Search & Rescue rope team members a chance to work out technical issues on their own.

It's a brisk late-November morning and the Search & Rescue team, a volunteer unit of the Mohave County Sheriff's Office, are simulating a mine shaft rescue inside the Boulder Springs mining district, learning to use equipment they recently bought - a tripod that elevates and anchors the rope above ground to reduce wear and tear. Earlier in the week they simulated a rescue at an industrial site, rigging the versatile tripod inside a stairwell at Nucor Steel in Kingman.

Rhodes, a retired Phoenix Fire Department firefighter and owner of Rescue Rig, travels across the country leading technical seminars and providing training and consulting to rescue teams. With the new tools come new options and flexibility, but also the added responsibility to train, he said. And the team of 15 volunteers who have committed to train for the entire week have come a long way in a few days.

One of the main issues Rhodes focused on - a big problem in rope rescue nationwide - was “rope trauma,” or damage caused to rescue rope. Negotiating the edge at the end of a rescue was another point of focus.

“I call it transitioning that edge - coming out of the hole - it's always a big deal,” he said. “It's almost like giving birth.”

The tripod brings the rope off of the ground so it doesn't come into contact with rocks, gravel and dirt as it lifts a victim to safety. The tension between the working line and safety line centers the weight in the middle, while the elevated anchors keep the rope away from obstacles.

There's quite a bit of physics involved in the elaborate pulley system, and that's part of the challenge, Rhodes said. One incorrect rig could tip over the whole thing.

DANGER OF MINES

Looking away from the mine shaft, Rhodes pointed out a subdivision rising on the other side of Shinarump Road. Roughly 100 years ago, when the mines were started, no one thought homes would sit so close, he said.

“And yet here we are, we're falling in them now.”

There are approximately 100,000 abandoned mines in the state, according to the Web site of the Arizona State Mine Inspector. The majority of them were started in the late 1800s and operated through the 1940s.

Now they're accidents waiting to happen, said Joe Hart, Arizona State Mine Inspector.

He said he's coordinating with mine officials to secure federal funding to fill the shafts, and has filled 20 since he took office in January. In order to continue the work he has asked the Arizona Legislature to increase his funding by $1.5 million a year for at least five years.

Part of his plan is to “take two negatives and make a positive” and fill the mine shafts with dirt and the abandoned tires that lie in piles throughout the state. In areas where there is water Hart said he would ensure the fill was successful by packing extra dirt as well as sealing off the mine with detonite.

Part of the reason for the growing number of accidents in recent years is the popularity of ATVs and dirt bikes that now take people off the beaten path and into previously inaccessible areas, Hart said. And to make matters even more dangerous, many of the mine shafts are overgrown with vegetation to the point they can't be seen ahead of time.

In many ways, the story of the 13-year-old girl who fell to her death into a Chloride mine shaft in September served as a wake-up call, Hart said. He added that the last fatal accident happened about three years ago.

“It's just a senseless, tragic death,” he said.

THE CHLORIDE RESCUE

The two sisters, 13-year-old Rikki Howard and 10-year-old Casie Hicks, had been riding an ATV when they fell into the unmarked, 125-foot deep mine shaft, according to Search & Rescue volunteers. By the time rescuers reached them, Howard had succumbed to her injuries. Hicks was lifted to safety.

But the rope rescue team did not have the new equipment Sept. 2, when they rappelled into the mine shaft to search for the girls.

“It was a very challenging set up,” said Luis Vega, Search & Rescue rope team leader. “We just had some scrawny pine trees and a big rock.”

The mine shaft itself was shaped like an hourglass with a narrow middle and a wider bottom area. Without the elevated anchor, the team was forced to lower rescuers directly from the edge of the mine shaft, in the process loosening more rocks and debris as the rope rubbed against the sides. At one point, a large rock fell down, narrowly missing the rescuers but putting a hole in the stokes litter, a type of stretcher used to lift victims to safety.

“There was a lot of unique circumstances there,” said Sheriff's Office Sgt. Mike Friend, one of two officials assigned to the volunteer team.

Because of the difficulty to reach location, the sliding rocks and the necessity to rig ropes a certain way, a great deal of rescue rope - about $2,500 worth - was sacrificed during the dangerous operation.

“By the time those ropes rub up in that rock face, you can't trust them for a real rescue after that,” Friend said. “Lives depend on those ropes.“

The new equipment was purchased largely as a result of that experience, to ensure the safety of the rescuers and the victims in future rescues, he said. But safety comes at a cost.

Including the tripod, ropes, pulleys, harnesses and litters, Friend estimated there was about $15,000 of equipment in use during the training session.

“Equipment to do rescue work with is extremely expensive,“ he said. “That's why the donations we get are so important.“

THE TEAM

For Tom Wilson, the Chloride accident hit home. Three weeks before, he was riding an ATV with his granddaughter near the same mine shaft.

“I thought I might be a resource to the community,” said the Chloride resident who works as an engineer for the city of Kingman. Now he's one of the newest members on a team that includes a geologist, a mechanic, several engineers, business owners, and a few retirees who've made the commitment to serve their communities at a moment's notice.

“We get in some interesting searches,” said Sid Gillman, a retired director of product development for The Boeing Company who joined Search & Rescue two years ago. In addition to the Chloride rescue he's gone to Peach Springs on the Arizona Strip to search for a lost hunter and to the Grand Canyon and Coconino County to assist other rescue teams.

On average, the team responds to about 50 incidents per year, from people stranded in the desert to climbers stranded on cliffs, said Friend, who has been in charge of Search & Rescue for 22 years. Along with Sgt. Rob McEuen, the team's coordinator, Friend oversees 90 volunteers from Bullhead City, Kingman and Lake Havasu City.

“As far as I'm concerned the volunteers are heroes,” Friend said, not only during rescues but in dedicating hours of their time to learning and practicing technical skills.

With favorable weather, plenty of people and equipment, and an accessible road nearby - the mine shaft rescue training took place in the best of scenarios, Vega said.

But that's rarely the case in a real emergency.

“In real life we never have the best situation - that's why we always train for the worst situation.”

The previously secret Army Corps of Engineers study is expected to prompt calls for the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration to further tighten its new underground mine seal regulations.

MSHA experts don’t believe the corps study is accurate, but agency officials conceded last week the findings are important enough to alert the mining community and allow the public to comment.

Richard Stickler, assistant labor secretary in charge of MSHA, said he plans to release the corps report and reopen a public comment period on MSHA’s proposed changes to its seal strength regulations.

“We’re on a deadline for getting this rule done, and we don’t want to cause any delays,” Stickler said in a phone interview Thursday. “But this deserves to be put out for comment.”

In its final report on the Sago disaster, MSHA concluded that the explosive forces that destroyed the underground seals involved “exceeded 93” pounds per square inch.

The 138-page corps study estimated the forces could have been much greater — perhaps as much as 629 pounds per square inch at one spot along the wall of foam blocks that sealed off an abandoned area of the Sago Mine.

MSHA’s new regulations, required by Congress in the 2006 MINER Act, mandate that mine operators build seals that can withstand at least 50 pounds per square inch and monitor the methane levels within sealed areas. Operators could avoid the expense and trouble of monitoring by building seals that could withstand 120 pounds per square inch of explosive pressures.

Under the MINER Act, MSHA was required to write new mine seal strength standards by the end of this year.

In mid-May, MSHA published a new standard as an emergency temporary rule. Such rules take effect immediately, instead of waiting for public comment to be considered and a final rule to be issued. Still, MSHA also must accept comments, then publish a final rule — which replaces the temporary emergency rule — within nine months. So, MSHA has until February to finalize the seal rule.

Corps experts used an elaborate computer model to try to estimate the explosive forces. The digital process is known as a computational fluid dynamics, or CFD, study.

One computer run estimates the Sago blast forces to have ranged between 51 pounds per square inch and 225 pounds per square inch. Another put the forces at between 156 and 629 pounds per square inch, according to the corps report.

On Friday, MSHA acting technical support director Linda F. Zeiler issued a memo that explained why her agency did not believe the corps study was accurate.

Basically, Zeiler said that neither MSHA nor the corps had accurate data on a variety of conditions in the Sago Mine at the time of the disaster to allow accurate computer modeling. For example, accurate estimates of methane levels in the sealed area, the distribution of that methane, and the level of energy at the ignition source, were not available to be plugged into the corps’ computer models, Zeiler wrote.

“The bottom line is that it turned out that vital pieces of information that the [corps] needed in order for the study to truly simulate the conditions that existed in Sago Mine when the explosion occurred could not be known and therefore could not be provided,” Zeiler wrote in a three-page memo.

In addition, Zeiler wrote, the levels of methane that were estimated for purposes of the corps study — 8 percent and 9.5 percent in two of the computer runs — were “worst-case” scenarios and very unlikely to have existed. Also, Zeiler wrote, some results of the computer models don’t match physical evidence found by the investigation team.

“We were queasy about the whole thing,” Zeiler said in an interview. “Actual facts don’t bear out what the model showed.”

Since 1969, coal operators were supposed to build all seals so that they were “explosion proof.”

In 1992, however, MSHA wrote a rule that weakened the standard, allowing seals to withstand just 20 pounds per square inch of force. MSHA officials cited a 1971 Bureau of Mines study that they said made the case for this 20-psi standard. But that study, by the late researcher Donald W. Mitchell, noted that federal standards for mine seals on government property, dating back to 1921, required seals to be more than twice as strong as the 20-psi rule.

Mine seals are widespread, with estimates ranging into the thousands at hundreds of mines across the coalfields. Throughout the 1990s, regulators said and did little about them, despite a series of lightning-induced explosions in sealed areas of mines in Alabama and West Virginia.

Seals drew new attention starting on Jan. 2, 2006, when 12 miners died after the huge explosion inside a sealed area of International Coal Group’s Sago Mine south of Buckhannon. Still, regulators did little until five more miners died in a May 20, 2006, explosion at the Kentucky Darby Mine in Harlan County, Ky. Two days after the Darby disaster, MSHA issued a temporary moratorium on the use of lightweight, alternative seals like those at Sago and Darby. And two months after that, MSHA announced that it was — without actually rewriting its regulations — going to require all seals to withstand at least 50 pounds per square inch of force.

After the MINER Act, MSHA largely modeled its new rule on a National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health seals study, which was issued in draft form in February and finalized in July.

The MSHA rule does not address a recommendation from NIOSH that seals on some large mined-out areas that are not going to be monitored should be able to withstand pressures of more than 640 pounds per square inch.

In ignoring that NIOSH recommendation, MSHA said in a May 22 Federal Register notice that, “MSHA has no empirical or other data at this time demonstrating that mine conditions exist that will necessitate seals stronger than 120 psi.”

But the corps study was completed May 9, two weeks before that Federal Register notice was published and on the same day that MSHA released its Sago investigation report listing the 93 psi number.

When the Sunday Gazette-Mail asked for a copy of the corps study two weeks ago, MSHA spokesman Matt Faraci initially said his agency did not believe the report had ever been finalized.

The Gazette-Mail then filed a formal Freedom of Information Act request for the report, and attached a copy of a cover sheet that designated the report as a “Final Draft.”

Three days after that FOIA request was submitted, MSHA’s Stickler called the Gazette-Mail to announce that he planned to release the corps study.

Stickler said that he had never been told that the study was completed, and that he was frustrated to have learned about the matter from a newspaper reporter.

“This is not the first time I’ve had this problem,” Stickler said. “I hear about things in the newspaper instead of from my own people.”