The economic costs of the disaster at Crandall Canyon Mine continue to mount. First were the record $1.8 million in federal fines levied against the mine operator and an engineering firm.
Now comes the undisclosed settlement of lawsuits on behalf of 16 groups of plaintiff families. The settlement reportedly exceeds the $22 million paid to families of the 27 victims of the 1984 Wilberg mine explosion and fire.
We can only hope that the settlement announced last week provides security to the families of the victims of the Crandall Canyon Mine tragedy. But we are also cognizant of the loss in human terms — widows living their lives without their spouses, children growing up without fathers and parents outliving their children. It's been heartbreaking to observe from a safe distance, let alone to endure such tragedy.
One reason the pain is so raw is that these events should have never happened. The collapse that trapped and killed six miners in Crandall Canyon Mine occurred as mine workers were removing the last coal from the aging mine using a technique called "retreat mining." The deadly cave-in resulted from "a catastrophic outburst of the coal pillars that were used to support the ground above the coal seam," Richard Stickler, federal Mine Safety and Health Administration assistant secretary, explained upon completion of the agency's review of the initial collapse that trapped and killed six miners and the subsequent collapse that killed three rescuers.
MSHA authorized retreat-mining practices in the mine, but it acted on incomplete and faulty information, federal officials have said. The mine operator, Genwal Resources Inc., failed to report three "coal outbursts" after they occurred, two in March 2007 and another three days before the first fatal collapse in August 2007. The decision to extract the remaining coal in the mine was an economic decision. In the end, it was not worth risking the lives of hard-working miners, let alone the financial costs of settling lawsuits, paying federal fines and attorneys' fees.
Since the Crandall Canyon disaster, at least one Utah coal mine had decided to bypass attempts to remove coal from an aging mine to avoid similar dangers. The mine operator decided it simply wasn't worth the risk. It's beyond tragic that the owners and operators of Crandall Canyon Mine didn't arrive at the same conclusion in March 2007.