Despite Crandall deaths, citations pile up

As the one-year anniversary of the Crandall Canyon Mine disaster approaches on Wednesday, a look back over the last 12 months shows the tragedy did not shock Utah mine owners into improving safety.

They still consistently and repeatedly broke even the most essential of safety rules during the past year, a Deseret News study shows.

"We inspect. We write a violation. The operator corrects it. They pay a fine. We go back next quarter and same thing —next quarter, next year, year after year," Richard E. Stickler, assistant labor secretary in charge of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, told the Deseret News in discussing its findings.

The Crandall Canyon Mine col- lapse, which entombed six miners, also led to the death 10 days later of three would-be rescuers who perished in a subsequent cave-in.

"I hope we can change the culture," Stickler said. "I know that every one of these violations can be prevented," but it takes money and effort. And Stickler complains: "In the past, many operators have been driven by the bottom line" more than safety.

They still may be, judging by the violations they amassed since the Crandall Canyon disaster. The Deseret News review of MSHA data shows, for example:

• Federal inspectors cited more than 1,300 safety violations in Utah underground coal mines since the disaster — a rate higher than the average for the previous four years. That 1,300 is besides another score of violations issued for the disaster itself.

• At least 368 of those violations — about a quarter of them — after Crandall Canyon were considered "significant and substantial" threats to health and life.

• Inspectors proposed fines of at least $1.2 million for violations in Utah in that time — with fines still yet to be proposed for nearly 400 of the violations found. That again is besides the coal-mining-record $1.8 million in fines proposed for violations arising from the Crandall Canyon disaster.

• Crandall Canyon Mine operator Robert E. Murray ranks No. 7 in the nation for the number of violations found at his mines nationwide — 1,543 — from Oct. 1 to March 31.

• Murray also has contested more violations —1,367, or 89 percent of all those cited at his mines — than all but one other mine operator in the nation in that time.

"Safety has to start at the top of every company. If a miner's working for a company, and the supervisor and the mine superintendent and the manager don't support that miner ... it's really tough for miners to always do the right thing. That's the direction that we need to move in," Stickler said.

But despite the Crandall Canyon disaster and all the attention it generated, violation rates actually worsened in Utah afterward.

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