Federal Investigators Find Troy Mine Negligent in Fatal Accident

Federal investigators find Troy Mine negligent in fatal accident_By MICHAEL JAMISON of the Missoulian
        
TROY - Federal investigators have concluded mine management was negligent regarding worker safety at Troy Mine, an underground copper and silver operation where an employee died during a cave-in last summer.__“Bruce Clark, mine manager, and Chuck Heyne, shift supervisor, engaged in aggravated conduct constituting more than ordinary negligence,” according to an investigative report completed one week after the July 30 accident.__The company does not agree.

“We are vigorously challenging that as being completely false,” countered Carson Rife, vice president of operations at Revett Minerals Inc. “We have contested a number of the citations, because we just don't feel they're accurate at all.”

“Obviously, we have an attorney working on this,” added Bill Orchow, company president and CEO.

The citations resulted from two Mine Safety and Health Administration inspections, both initiated just days after the cave-in that killed 55-year-old mechanic Mike Ivins. One - a regular safety inspection - resulted in 27 violations noted at the mine. The other - a “complaint inspection” initiated by worker whistleblowers - concluded with 24 additional violations.

A third inspection, specific to the roof collapse that killed Ivins, is not yet complete, but the first two investigations include several citations relative to loose and dangerous rock conditions similar to those that crushed Ivins' truck.

In fact, of the 24 problems noted in the complaint inspection, 14 were directly related to inadequate “scaling” (the process of pulling loose rock off mine ceilings and walls) or insufficient support (the process of propping up potentially loose rock).

Page after page of the report details “loose, unconsolidated material” that “exposed employees to a hazard of being struck by falling material.” Several citations call the violations an “unwarrantable failure to comply with a mandatory (safety) standard.”

The MSHA inspectors concluded, in several cases, that “a person getting struck by a rock ... could receive fatal crushing injuries.”

In one area, “the loose ground was easily seen and after being scaled down appeared to be about three to four tons. ... This area is well-traveled by miners.”

At another, precarious rock slabs weighing several hundred pounds were popped loose with a handbar.

At many sites, mine safety inspectors said the dangerous rock was “easily seen,” and “obvious.”

In calling for increased supports beneath one particular “three-way fault zone,” MSHA inspectors reported rock failures and water seeping through faults. “This condition exposes miners to a large fall of ground in high traffic areas while active mining progresses.”

The company admitted it was aware of those dangers, adding that the area in question was inspected daily.

But regulators were not convinced, saying “miners that work and travel in the area have expressed concerns over possible ground problems on several occasions to the company. The company engaged in aggravated conduct, constituting more than ordinary negligence, in that the potential ground hazards were known yet the company failed to ensure the area was safe for miners to work and to travel.”

That apparent company knowledge of dangerous conditions appeared in several citations, including those in which loose rocks “were blackened with diesel exhaust from passing mobile equipment, indicating that this condition had existed for a significant period of time.”

But while MSHA inspectors wondered how such conditions could have persisted for so long, Rife - Revett's operations director - was asking why the problems were never spotted during any of MSHA's previous mine inspections.

“Some of it may be just reactionary to the accident,” he said of the inspectors' new attention to detail.

“But you can't blame MSHA,” said Amy Louviere, public affairs director for the agency. “The bottom line is, the operator has the responsibility to keep the workers safe.”

Rife immediately challenged suggestions that the Troy tunnels were any more dangerous than underground mining necessarily must be, and he was particularly defensive of the citations in which his managers were personally named.

Specifically, MSHA inspectors reported that miners were ordered by management to drive far into dangerous tunnels, and then scale rock on their way back out. That way, they said, the rock-littered floor would only have to be cleaned once, rather than several times if the crews scaled on their way in.

Saving cleanup time, the inspectors concluded, “was more important than the employees' safety.”

“That simply is not true,” Rife said. “We will defend ourselves vigorously against those inaccuracies.”

His defense, however, is not doing much for miner morale. Each of the citations and violations is posted in what Troy Mine workers call the “lamp room,” an orange-painted room where miners hang their head lamps.

It is the spot where workers gather and talk between shifts, and there the rumors and speculation fly. Will Ivins' death close the mine? Will someone be fired? Or even jailed?

At MSHA, inspectors are mum as to what the ongoing fatality investigation might conclude. They also won't say whether they've passed any information on to criminal prosecutors.

Instead, they are allowing the two completed inspections to speak for themselves. (Since those were finished, five subsequent inspections have resulted in four more citations, half of which were related to inadequate scaling or support.)

Miners, meanwhile, report a wave of resignations from their ranks, as well as graffiti and practical jokes aimed at specific managers.

“Morale has been better,” admitted Orchow. “Within a couple weeks of the accident, 10 or 15 people quit. People decided that this job was maybe a little more dangerous than they thought.”

Prior to Ivins' death, Rife said, the mine had 179 hourly workers. Now, it's operating with 148, and at least a half-dozen of those are brand-new miners, hired to replace at least some of those who have chosen to leave.

The MSHA postings in the lamp room, Rife said, “don't help the situation at all.”

Still, he said, the Troy operation is slowly getting back to normal.

“We've gone through the entire mine,” he said, “to make doubly sure that the mine is as safe as we can possibly make it.”